


something wicked this way comes

by Elle Blessingway (elle_blessing)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2009-05-27
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2017-12-13 19:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 38
Words: 23,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/828231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_blessing/pseuds/Elle%20Blessingway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Harry Potter centric drabbles and ficlets.  Pairings and character combinations represented thus far can be viewed at the <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/828231/navigate">chapter index</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Sin in Stilettos (Harry Potter/Pansy Parkinson)

**Author's Note:**

> This exists for two reasons: 1) I write a lot of rare pairs, and 2) I write a lot of short stuff. I don't like making new stories for every little drabble or not-quite-1,000 word ficlet I write, so this is pretty much my fic dump catch-all for anything that won't merit it's own stand alone story.
> 
> If you like my random vignettes, bookmark this story! I'll be adding to it periodically.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating:** PG-13  
>  **Warnings:** Sexual themes.  
>  **Notes:** written for dream_mancer as part of a drabble meme, though it turned into more of a one-shot. Since fulfilling the requests has taken me a bit of time, this one happens to be done and gifted on Laura's birthday. HAPPY 22nd LAURA!!

_How very sweet,_ Pansy thought even as her brow curved in a gentle arch.   
  
Dark eyes watched the scene unfold. One of the trainees dropped her book, perfectly timed just as Harry was passing by going the other direction. Ever the gallant knight that he was, Pansy watched him bend to pick it up and then offer it to the younger blonde.  
  
Her brow arched further as she watched the blonde – Rominda Vane, or some such drivel – smile up at him before lowering her lashes in seeming shyness as she said something to him and proceeded to crack the book open. On cue, the entirely too chivalrous savior of the wizarding world bent over her shoulder as she pointed out something in the text.   
  
Pansy’s eyes narrowed slightly. Rocilda Vane was about as shy as Draco Malfoy after he’d had too much firewhiskey, and Pansy knew for a fact she wasn’t struggling in Law  & Procedures.   
  
She occasionally lectured for the class, after all.  
  
Leaving the arch of the doorway she’d been standing in, Pansy headed towards the pair, her stilettos making a satisfying ‘clicking’ sound against the marble floors.   
  
“Harry,” rolled off her tongue much like every other word she spoke; like melted dark chocolate. “Do you have a moment?”  
  
He’d heard the clip of her heels and he’d felt the hair on the back of his neck stand on end at the sound, but her voice all but purring his name had focused his attention to her entirely, and his gaze was dark when he raised it to hers. “What do you want, Parkinson?”  
  
Pansy’s lips curled in the tiniest of smiles. She could feel Rocinda Vane scowling at her. “Why you, of course.”  
  
He had to force his eyes to stay on her face, though it didn’t much matter that he wasn’t looking. Harry knew her ample curves; she made sure everyone did with the tight skirt-suits and stilettos she wore. “That simple then,” he commented dryly.  
  
“Auror Potter, I was just wondering what you thought of the detaining procedures for unarmed-”   
  
“Yes, that simple.” Pansy raised a brow at him, tiny smile still playing at her lips as she spoke right over the blonde trainee. His gaze hadn’t left hers, and though he looked somewhat irritated – he always was at her, on principle –Pansy knew when a man was attracted to her, and Harry Potter was.   
  
Gods, the woman was like sin in stilettos. She was a consultant for the department, her expertise in ancient magics making her invaluable especially given the proclivities of the Death Eaters they were still hunting.   
  
She always looked as if she was vastly amused at the goings-on and that tiny smile of hers made him want to shake her as it was more than often directed at him.   
  
She must have had a breakthrough on the case they’d been working on though, and Harry nodded his head shortly before stepping away from … he glanced down - _Vane. That’s right._ “Sorry I couldn’t help, Trainee Vane. Excuse me.”  
  
Pansy hadn’t spared a glance for the blonde, and still didn’t as she turned with Harry at her side and left her behind in the hallway. She could feel the daggers in her back though, and it only served to make the tiny smile on her face curve further.   
  
Today. She’d been toying with the idea for months, had been testing the waters for just as long. Today she would taste though. It was ludicrous and Draco thought her quite mad for even entertaining the attraction, but one could not argue with the pound of one’s pulse, the quickening of breath and the heat that she could almost _lick_ off of him.  
  
Perhaps she would do that too.  
  
Despite his general surliness in her direction, Harry was ever the gentleman and held the door open for her and then followed behind her into her office.   
  
Once inside, Pansy turned to face him. “I do have a name, Harry.”  
  
There it was again. His name on her lips. His given name. Dark green eyes flicked from her lips to the dark eyes looking up at him as if she knew something he didn’t. “You wanted me?”  
  
“Yes,” she acknowledged, lips twitching in amusement despite the insistent pound of her pulse. He was not aware, but _she_ was aware that his eyes always roamed over her. “Though it’s more present tense.”  
  
“You _want_ me?” he asked, brow furrowing slightly. She was playing word games and he couldn’t find himself surprised, though he was surprised at the sudden warmth in the room.   
  
“Quite,” she replied, closing the distance between them and reaching for his tie.   
  
He caught her hands in both of his before she could touch him. “What are you doing, Parkinson?”  
  
“Fixing your tie,” she replied calmly after she’d recovered the tiny exhale his grasp had caused. Lids heavy, she looked up at him. “I do have a name,” she repeated again.  
  
Warm. It was very warm, though he didn’t know why, and he looked at her a long moment. She wasn’t harmless by far, but there was nothing she could do to him with her bare hands that he couldn’t stop, and so he released them. “I’m aware you have a name. What is it that you wanted?”  
  
“You,” she replied calmly as she reached again, fingers deftly undoing the tie. “And I’d appreciate it if you used my given name, Harry,” she added, pulling the knot out of the material until it hung loosely around his neck.  
  
Harry frowned as he looked down at what she’d done to his tie and then back to the woman herself. Green eyes were caught as she wet her lips, but moved on after a long moment until he met her heavy lidded gaze. _Sin on stilettos_ , he thought again.   
  
“You want me for what?” he asked, hands going to his tie. “To undo my tie so I have to retie it? What do you want, Parkinson?”  
  
“Pansy,” she said, hands catching his so that his gaze came to hers. “I want you to call me Pansy,” she continued as she moved his hands away from his tie.  
  
She was not unaware that she was about to step across a line that might backfire, but there was heat like a living thing between them, making her _want_. She could feel it in him, see it in the way he looked at her, the way he moved around her; like he was hunting. He didn’t mean to, she knew, but his eyes always followed her, heavy even from across a room. He never touched her on purpose, but Harry was drawn to her space as much as she was drawn to his; even now he was leaning towards her, towering over her.   
  
“Can you do that, Harry?” she asked.  
  
Her voice drew his gaze from where her hands clasped him – soft, he noted – to her dark gaze on him. His next breath brought her scent to him, something he could identify as _her_ , but had never had coat his tongue as if he could _taste_ her as well. “Pansy.”  
  
“Very good,” she murmured, pulse pounding as she stirred into movement. Her lids were heavy, but she kept his gaze as she set the larger hands she clasped on her waist. He watched her, and didn’t resist, and for the first time since she had begun spending the bulk of her time in the MLE, Pansy could not read his expression.   
  
He did not push her away, or pull away though, and she took one step closer so that she could feel the heat of his body as she reached for either side of his tie hanging around his neck and tugged.   
  
Slow motion. He felt as if he was watching from outside himself, the whole scene surreal and moving in slow motion. Pansy wanted him. She _wanted_ him. … she wanted _him_?  
  
Breath shared as he was now bent over her, Pansy stopped just short of pressing her lips to his. His hands were warm, heavy on her waist, but he’d yet to move them from where she’d set them. “One more time, Harry?” she breathed, lips brushing his as she spoke.  
  
It was her voice that snapped him back to the present, and all the heat building back and forth between them hit him at one time, his eyes going dark with it. “Pansy,” he said, voice rough.  
  
“Very, very good,” she breathed before she tugged on his tie and pressed her lips to his.  
  
Harry had known what she was going to do, but the reality of it held him still for a long moment. Pansy Parkinson was snogging him in her office. The one woman that irritated the hell out of him was snogging him in her office.   
  
It was only when she began to pull away that a growl rumbled from him. One of his hands slid around her back even as the other rose to twine in her hair. Tipping her face up, he captured her lips as he pulled her flush against him. Thought was distant, but her pulling away had been a rather insistently negative one.  
  
So _wrong_. She knew this, had known it all along, but as she opened her mouth to him and he splayed his hand over her back, Pansy couldn’t find it in herself to care. At all. It felt so very _right_.  
  
Soft, supple, giving. It was overwhelming, and Harry drank like a man in a drought. Every gasp, every hitch of breath, every little sound he swallowed. He’d never kissed a woman like this before. He’d kissed more than a few, but _never like this_ , not like she was the air he couldn’t get enough of. When her fingers twined in his hair, pulling, Harry lost all thought and both his hands curved over her arse, pulling her against him even as his hips rolled into hers.  
  
 _Oh gods._ Beyond tasting him, Pansy hadn’t thought further, hadn’t been able to. It was _Harry_. There’d been doubt whether he would even let her, but just that moment all such thoughts were far, _far_ away. It was heat that filled her, heat that made the soft moan slip her lips, and heat that made her pull at his hair again to pull herself up his body, feel him _again_.  
  
It was her moan that slowed him, but only just. What he _wanted_ was to swipe the desk clear and get her to make more of those sounds, but what he did was force his hands back to her small waist, force himself to pull back until it was just heavy breathing they shared.  
  
"Pansy," was just a gust of air this time.  
  
"Yes, Harry," she breathed, lids heavy as she rolled her gaze up to his, a Cheshire grin curling her lips. "Very good."


	2. Your Madonna Was Medusa In The End (James Potter/Bellatrix Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for absolutelybatty for the [Summer 2009 Wishlist Event](http://rarepair-shorts.livejournal.com/238531.html) over at [rarepair_shorts](http://rarepair-shorts.livejournal.com/).

  
Eyes followed her wherever she went.  
  
It wasn't that her skirt was ever too short, or that her blouse was buttoned one button less than it should be.  
  
It was so many other things, mixed together to make a budding woman who would seduce like a Venus Fly Trap.  
  
It was the way her hips swayed, gently, and the soft tumble of her long, dark hair as she turned her head at the call of her name. It was dusky blue eyes that saw _everything_ when she looked into yours, all the fault lines that made you who you were, and it was the full bow of her lips that curled into a smile that was seductive and enticing, but never friendly.  
  
One couldn't _not_ watch Bellatrix Black.  
  
She was absolute danger wrapped in a beautifully seductive package.  
  
James knew it was wrong. He was dating the girl of his dreams, the girl he'd pursued for most of his time at school, the girl he was even planning on asking to marry him. He loved Lily.  
  
But he couldn't get Bella out of his head.  
  
It was her fault somehow. He'd watched her through school, knew what she was like, _heard_ the more intimate and frightening things she never showed to the wrong eyes from Sirius.  
  
James knew what she was.  
  
But when she turned that dark blue gaze to him, even if only for a moment, it thrilled him to his core as much as it shamed him.  
  
He _knew_ what she was. A Black. Even Sirius was a little loose with the heritage his family had given him, though James would never pick a different best friend. But Bella? Bella Black was a hairsbreadth from being absolutely mad.  
  
But she was so very aware, and instead of making her repulsive, the madness seemed to coat her like warm honey.  
  
She _should_ be easy to stay away from, repulsive, bone-chilling and terrifying.  
  
And she was. Even at seventeen she was, but it was the most compelling thing James had ever seen, and he knew he was not alone. His eyes were not the only ones that followed her with a mix of want and guilt, self-disgust.  
  
But it was him whose gaze she returned as she entered the Great Hall and made her way to the Slytherin table.  
  
It was him at whom she looked as her lips curled ever so slightly into that small smile that drew attention to lips that he should not think about, most especially when the expression on them was more that of a hunter than anything, despite the softness of her lips, or any expression they made.  
  
It was him who saw the knowledge in the dark blue depths of her gaze as he met hers. He knew that she knew. It would only be a matter of time until she entered further into his personal circle. She was not always slow, but she knew him.  
  
Quick, fast, forgettable. Gryffindor. He _could_ forget if it was just a moment, a night, a slip up in a broom closet. The humor he'd seen in her eyes as she turned away - only a split second of contact so that really no one but himself knew, so that everyone around him was still blissfully unaware - but it was enough, and though she was across the room and there were many voices in between them as everyone waited for food to appear for supper, he heard her laugh.  
  
It was enough to create a lull in the whole of the hall as it touched all present. It was a touchable, physical thing, her laugh. Warm honey sliding across your skin, leaving a prickle of awareness in its wake.  
  
He knew. And so did she. And as Lily leaned into him and wrapped her arm around his waist so she could press a light kiss to his cheek, guilt burned through him.  
  
"James?"  
  
"Hmm?"  
  
"What were you looking at?" She looked across the room, though there was no worry in her features, just curiosity.  
  
It was easy to find a smile around Lily, and one slipped across his features as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders and leaned to speak lowly near her ear. "Just you," was a breath fanning warm across her skin, and it delighted him that she shivered.  
  
But he raised his eyes, _knowing_ he shouldn't, and even as he felt Lily react to him, he watched Bella's lips curve into a smile that made him hate her.  
  
Because he wanted her.  
  
And she knew it.  
  
He was a damned man. "I love you, Lils."  
  
Green eyes tipped up to his, warm as the small smile on her lips, just for him. "I love you too, James," she whispered so that Sirius wouldn't hear and take the mickey out of them both again.  
  
Guilt. It was a very sour tasting thing.


	3. Undo It (Draco Malfoy/Astoria Greengrass)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for hp_humpdrabbles at LiveJournal. The prompt was the song "Undo It" by Carrie Underwood.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes.

_You stole my happy, you made me cry_  
 _Took the lonely and took me for a ride_  
 _I should have walked but I never had the chance_  
 _Everything got out of hand and I let it slide_

  
Her back arched, silk sliding against damp skin and Astoria's lips parted on a gasp. Little hands clutched at his shoulders, scraped down to the base of his spine, and even as he filled her again, _so good_ , she cursed herself for her weakness.  
  
Draco should have never chosen her, not when he pined for another. She'd seen the way his eyes followed the Weasley girl.  
  
He should have never married her, never taken her to bed, never made it so easy to fall in love with him. He should have never filled her belly with his child, made it impossible for her to leave.  
  
He should have never made this feel _so damn good_.  
  
His breathing was warm against her neck as his hips rolled into hers, his hands hot on her, possessive in a way he didn't rightly deserve.  
  
Pleasure found her with a shuddering breath, a cry, and a tear slipped down Astoria's cheek as he fell over the edge with her.

_Now I only have myself to blame for falling for your stupid games_  
 _I wish my life could be the way it was before I saw your face_  
 _You had my heart, now I want it back_  
 _I'm starting to see everything you lack_  
 _Boy, you blew it, you put me through it_  
 _I want to, want to undo it..._


	4. Perfect Desecration (Rodolphus Lestrange/Bellatrix Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for hp_humpdrabbles on LiveJournal. The prompt was 'snow'.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes, biting.

He was alive, ivory skin tinted pink as he moved over her, in her. It was freezing in the open air as they were, her cloak beneath them the only protection from the snow. It didn't matter though, not when blood ran hot beneath the skin, pulsing in time with the rhythm of hips moving in tandem.  
  
Bella's dusky blue gaze was heavy on his, intent and smoky as she watched the chords of his neck strain with the movement of his body. The muscles of his arms and shoulders worked, and as her eyes followed the line of him to where their bodies met, her lips parted on a gasp as he buried himself deeper yet.  
  
Their skin was pale, nearly as translucent as the snow, but tinted with the passion of their bodies, pinkened with exertion and the stutter of breath, the growls against skin, the vivid lines of nails raked into his back.  
  
When she arched, Bella could see the castle through the trees, from the forest that was forbidden to them. It was her hunting ground, but just now Rodolphus was chasing his own prey, her pleasure and his, and the rough, _lovely_ slide of him into her again, the bruising grip of his hand on her hip had Bella rolling them in a single movement.  
  
It pressed her lover against the snow, the cold sucking the warmth from fevered flesh, but his eyes were dark and gone, only for her, and a slow smile curled Bella's lips as she met his gaze. He was hers, to have and to use and to bleed and to keep, and she his, their flesh one and pure.  
  
Rodolphus wound his hand in her hair then, raked her head back and bit at the soft juncture of neck and shoulder.  
  
Bella's eyes widened, anger and _want_ and so many things flashing through her dark blue eyes as the band of muscle that was his arm wound around her waist and they rolled again, his hips bruising into her.  
  
A gasping laugh was lost in hot breaths against his skin as she wrapped herself around him, this man who would keep her and have her, who would tame her with the edge of his own madness, the beautiful symmetry of pain and want and so much more.  
  
He worried his teeth at her then and the buzzing lovlieness of pain laced pleasure had her raking her nails down his arms, blood coating her hands, and even as she arched off the frigid snow, her hands found purchase and left their red stain on the white blanket they had chosen. It was a sacrilege, the virgin whiteness so marred, but so was their union.  
  
A Black and a Lestrange ... they bled each other to have and to hold, a promise of what was to come when they were beyond the walls of Hogwarts, but together they would bleed all, a perfect desecration.


	5. Love Is (Ron Weasley/Pansy Parkinson)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for carrie_leigh at her [February Love Contest](http://carrie-leigh.livejournal.com/230536.html). The bolded quotes are from [1 Corinthians 13:4-7](http://www.esvbible.org/1+Corinthians+13%3A4-7/).

**Love is patient and kind**  
  
She's called him poor and dirty, unclean and so many other things. It doesn't really matter though. Ron knows it's because she hurts, knows because the most biting of words fall like acid when she's about to cry.   
  
Those are the times when he just holds her and wonders at the fact that he didn't yell back. What does it mean?  
  
 **Love does not boast or envy**  
  
Ron always wonders how he ended up with Pansy. She has everything he thought he wanted - the estate, the money, the power and influence. People do what she says and everyone knows her name.  
  
But in the end, none of it really mattered. It was all about making her smile.  
  
 **It is not arrogant or rude**  
  
He still has trouble holding his tongue and his temper, but when faced with hers he finds that there's nothing there to spark. Not when he realized it was because she hurt; retribution was hollow after that.  
  
The urge to fight back still whispers through his mind when Pansy has thrown her barbs, but Ron knows now that he has to persevere. There's no room for pride, not with _her_.  
  
 **It does not insist on its own way**  
  
Sometimes it's the hardest thing Ron's ever done to live the role of 'Ickle Ronnikins'. Other times it's easy to be the youngest brother, in the shadow of Bill and Charlie, Percy, Fred and George. He can throw fits, lose his temper and always point to some kind of justification given his standing behind the others, that it's hard to follow so much potential realized.  
  
But it all changed when he met Pansy. One moment changed everything; she was Parkinson, but now she's Pansy, always. Ron _wants_ to be what she needs. Somehow that became more important than finding excuses for himself. Now he wants to be better, for her.  
  
When did that happen?   
  
**It is not irritable or resentful**  
  
It's not always easy. Pansy is mean, vindicitive and her first reaction is to redirect the hurt on someone else. He was always an easy target for her - a Weasley - but now he's too close, sees too much.   
  
And she wants to drive him away, prove to herself that all people do is let you down and that she's right; she's not really worth it.  
  
Sometimes Ron burns with the desire to repay her barb for barb, to make her feel what words can do.   
  
But then he realized he loved her. Truly. And it was an earth shattering thing, so much so that he knows he just has to take it. Convince her she's worth loving. Show her what he sees.  
  
 **It does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices with the truth**  
  
Sometimes it's still there, that urge to just give up and really _dig_ at her where he knows it'll hurt the most.   
  
But she smiles more. She laughs.   
  
It makes it all worth it. Everything. He smiles more too, now, and sometimes, though he would never admit it, it feels so good to see her happy, that it hurts, and he's not sure if he won't cry.  
  
 **Love bears all things, believes in all things, hopes in all things**  
  
He wasn't perfect. There were days where he thought he'd failed them both. He wasn't the Chosen One, was never expected to amount to anything, not after his brothers. Pansy was so broken and anyone would have been better than him to try and put the pieces back together.  
  
No one believed in him. Sometimes he didn't believe in him.   
  
Pansy never said it, and probably never would, but she hoped with every fiber of her being that Ron would prove her wrong. That there was someone out there who was _worth_ believing in.   
  
**Love endures all things**  
  
Thing was, he wasn't perfect. But he was _there_ , and in the end, it was all that mattered.


	6. A Gorgonesque Stare (Lucius Malfoy/Bellatrix Lestrange, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Malfoy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for goddessvicky at the [2010 Death Eater Fest Fic/Art Exchange](http://community.livejournal.com/deatheaterfest/5527.html) at deatheaterfest on LiveJournal. The prompts used were 'Lucius/Bellatrix, bondage & shallow cuts'. The title is a lyric from "Shiver" by Vendetta Red.
> 
> I'd also like to thank my lovely betas and friends, amazonmink and silverstardance!
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes, infidelity, 'bondage & shallow cuts'

He was too easy.  
  
Lucius was a courtier. Cultured. Soft. His grey eyes followed the youngest of them, as fair and fine-looking as himself.  
  
Pure, he thought. A lovely, proper wife who would bear him pure Malfoy children, he thought. An heir.  
  
As she ran the blade, so sharp it took barely any pressure at all to split skin, down the clean, smooth line of his alabaster chest, Bella rather thought he hadn't a clue what he courted.  
  
Narcissa was the porcelain doll, but she was a _Black_. He should know better, most especially as he shuddered beneath the touch of her blade. His blood was vivid against his skin, on her hands, painting her lips.  
  
"Do you like this, hmm?" It was idle curiosity spoken in seductive warmth, the timbre of Bellatrix's voice the undoing of her prey.  
  
When he didn't answer her straight away, didn't open his eyes, Bella flicked her wrist and the blade dug deep.  
  
The cry of pain, _pleasure_ laced through it, filled her room as he arched from the sudden, aching sting. Dusky blue eyes watched the well of blood, the way it wound it's way over the whiteness of him. It was beautiful, she decided. A macabre painting of of scarlet on the palest of skin, the downy blond of his hair so like her sister's.  
  
"Lucius, shall I do that again?" Another idle question for this man who would make himself her sister's keeper.  
  
" _Yes_." Blue eyes shifted from their fascination with her finger sliding through the warmth still pulsing from her artistry. His own eyes were dark, defiant, a shade of the near dusk she had not seen on him before.  
  
She tipped her head. He would not say more, not this noble of a man who was bred to ask for nothing and take everything.  
  
Her lips curled slowly.  
  
He was uncomplicated, this ethereal man who thought he knew darkness. His only masks were brittle and proud, but she would teach him to embrace the darkness in those grey eyes of his.  
  
She was not the only Black who liked blood, and it was most deliciously unexpected from her doll-like sister. For this night, not so many eves until he would make Narcissa's name Malfoy, Bellatrix would teach Lucius to beg, for that is what he was made to be taught, bred to be broken for someone.  
  
Her wand was in hand then, the tip of it pressed into the incision she'd made and her own gaze darkened when he flinched.  
  
" _Incarcerous._ "  
  
"Bellatrix, we did not agree to-" His brow was furrowed now as he tugged at his restraints.  
  
"Mmm, but I am no truth teller and you have not been careful." Capturing his chin with her bloodied had, Bella roughly forced him to meet her gaze. "This is a single lesson of many, brother to be. You will father the only children to bear the blood of our family." She captured his lips then, made him strain for her only to bite on the full lower lip her sister daydreamed of.  
  
The suddenness of the pain, the coppery taste that filled both their mouths, had him puling away from her, pulling from her touch, at the restraints that held him still.  
  
"Have a care, you proud, proud man, else you will ruin her and ours." The mutinous lust swirling in his gaze had her lips curling into a smile, something darkly beautiful, compelling. An invitation to death.  
  
Shifting, she licked the line of blood that had drizzled from the cut she'd put to juncture of neck and shoulder before pressing a bloodied kiss just beneath his ear. "If you ruin her," she whispered, breath hot against his skin, "I'll kill you."  
  
She bit him then, the softness of his neck, and he arched into her, cried out.  
  
Lucius was not her choice. He was a weak-willed man, beautiful to gaze upon, but where there should be strength beneath the veneer of pride in his name, his family, the darkness that hovered just about his person, Bella only saw fault lines that ran deep into the core of his being.  
  
He was not careful. He thought himself the possessor of more power than he was capable. He was arrogant and self-important. He was weak willed and feeble.  
  
But his eyes followed Narcissa. There was possession in his gaze, longing and something Bella was less familiar with, something deeper and binding. He loved Narcissa, would keep her safe. He was foolish yet, but there was a canniness to his eye, a ruthlessness to his mien.  
  
He was pure and the Dark Mark was a lovely, swirling tattoo against his nearly translucent skin.  
  
Lucius Malfoy would do. He would bend to Narcissa as his little queen. He would father Black children, and he would rise to the name of their Dark Lord.  
  
But tonight, tonight he would beg for her and know that there were darker things than he knew.  
  
"Say it," she whispered against the vivid, bruising mark she'd made on him. " _Scream_ it and perhaps I shall put away my flechettes." She felt him tense, knew his eyes went to the box of tiny blades made just for this purpose.  
  
He was silent.  
  
Bellatrix smiled against his skin. "For the best, my brother to be. You've much to learn."  
  
A sleight of hand; nails, blade and blood, and then he screamed.

...  
  
Narcissa's gaze followed her sister.  
  
Bellatrix was there, part of the festivities of her wedding celebration, but apart. Most affected by their family's inbreeding, perhaps. Or mayhap she'd just embraced the darkness of their blood more than herself and Andromeda, who was blood traitor.  
  
Or perhaps she had the right of it, that there could be nothing but blood and power in a world such as theirs.  
  
"You look beautifully delicious, my love." Lucius' breath was warm against her neck and the tiniest of smiles curled her lips.  
  
Her husband now, _hers_.  
  
Narcissa glanced over her shoulder at him. Their coloring was nearly identical; they were cousins, several generations removed and such was not uncommon in their world. "What did she say to you when you danced with her?"  
  
"Who?" She did not miss the slight change in his eyes, and Narcissa wasn't sure if she hated her sister or not. Could one truly loathe barely contained, canny madness?  
  
"Bellatrix, darling. You danced with her not half an hour ago? She made you angry?"  
  
Again, Narcissa did not miss the flare in her new husband's eyes.  
  
"It was nothing, my love. Your sister speaks riddles of nonsense, you know this." He ran a hand down her arm then and pressed his lips her neck again.  
  
Riddles of nonsense and truth, for the wild animal could not lie when hunting.  
  
Two pairs of dusky blue eyes met each other from across the room. The identical smile that curled the lips of the Black sisters could not have been deciphered by any save the one missing, and for that, those who saw it felt fear and wondered from whence it came.

  



	7. Lipstick (Ron Weasley/Pansy Parkinson)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for 13oct at a 2010 drabble meme. She requested Ron/Pansy using the prompts were 'Mrs. Weasley, baking, and lipstick'.

Grimmauld was full these days, and _not_ in a good way. Ron didn’t understand why they had to take in the likes of Draco Malfoy and Pansy Parkinson; they were _evil_. Draco even had the bloody Dark Mark staining his arm! He didn’t care what Kingsley and Moody said about the two Slytherins. He didn’t trust them.  
  
A deep scowl marred his brow as he stalked down the dark hall. The surly look was replaced with one of surprise and an ‘oof!’ when a hand reached from a closet and tugged on his arm firmly. “Now wait just a bloody minute-”  
  
“Shut up, Weasley,” came a quiet hiss just before the door shut behind him, cutting off all light.  
  
“ _Parkinson_?!” Ron was scandalized. He was alone in a ruddy closet with Pansy Parkinson. He was sure to lose his virtue from that alone.  
  
“I said,” she murmured, hand moving up his arm to his shoulder, exploratory, as she couldn’t see him, “to shut up.”  
  
His eyes widened and he took a step back, away from her, and promptly backed into the wall. “ _Whatareyoudoing?_ ”  
  
“Just testing something out,” she said calmly, small hand following the line of his shoulder. “And since you are deplorable at taking direction, I am shutting you up myself,” she added, other hand finding him in the darkness, both trailing past the collar of his shirt. His skin was burning hot beneath her touch and she imagined it must be quite red now. The thought only served to make her lips curl slightly, though he would not see in the darkness. It was probably best that way.  
  
Ron knew he should be pushing her hands away, should be running from the closet as fast as he could to find Kingsley and Moody to report how he had been accosted, but for some reason he found he was unable to move. She had paralyzed him. “Huh?”  
  
Pansy’s hands were tracing up his jaw now and her pulse quickened when she had to stand on tip toe, body sliding against his, to wind her fingers in his unkempt hair.  
  
“Parkinson?” His voice was strained.  
  
“Really, Weasley. _Shut up_ ,” she whispered moments before her lips pressed to his. The beat of her heart was too quick and she found that in moments she was quite light headed. But then his hands were on her hips, his grip firm and sure, his lips slanted over hers, and moments later _her_ back was against the wall. It was then that Pansy stopped thinking all together and a tiny sound slipped her lips.  
  
He couldn’t say how long he was in the closet with her, but when the twins ran by, as loud as a herd of elephants, Pansy nipped at his lip. “Same time, same place. Tomorrow,” was her murmured instructions against his mouth before she shoved him out of the closet. Not moments later he heard his mum calling from the kitchen and dazedly ambled down the stairs.  
  
That had been fraternizing with the enemy. Hadn’t it?  
  
“What is that on your face, dear?” Molly asked as she straightened, sheet of freshly baked biscuits in hand. She peered at him curiously.  
  
After a long, slow blink, Ron said, “Huh?”  
  
Setting the hot sheet down, she took off her oven mit and reached out to swipe her finger at the corner of his mouth. When she held it up, Ron was appalled to see a red stain on her finger. Lipstick. Pansy wore lipstick.  
  
His eyes widened, skin heating red as his hair and his gaze flicked to Molly’s. “Uhh …”


	8. Fleur Brûlante (Bill Weasley/Fleur Delacour)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for hp_humpdrabbles at LiveJournal. Prompt used was 'Fleur Delacour' -- my first time writing her!
> 
> Note: _fleur brûlante_ means 'burning flower'.

Fleur sniffed. “Zis iz reediculous. We should not 'ave to do zis work. Zat iz what ze goblins are zer for.”  
  
Bill’s lips curled slightly, but he didn’t take his eyes from the mausoleum’s door. To do so would be to court certain dismemberment and possible death. With his focus on the mess of curses and spells, they would at least continue breathing. “The goblins only concern themselves with what we find, dove.” He could feel her scowl burning between his shoulders and his grin grew. “You’re just uncomfortably warm and trying your best impression of a harpy for it.”  
  
“Zis iz England! It should not be so warm.” Her eyes narrowed on his back as she re-piled her hair atop her head again to keep the blond mass from heated skin. “If you call me ze 'arpy again, I weel-”  
  
“You’ll what?” Bill asked as he rose from his crouch and turned. Blue eyes took note of the sun’s kiss on her cheeks, the gentle swell revealed by the scoop of her tank, but it was her own burning cerulean gaze that had his lips curling further.  
  
“Will you hex me?” He took a step towards her, ridiculously pleased when her eyes darkened. He’d always enjoyed courting danger, and a pissed off half-Veela was better than any dragon or cursed tomb.  
  
“More zen zat.” She glared at him. Bill Weasley, her mentor in curse-breaking, was the most infuriating man she’d ever met. She wanted to scratch the knowing smiles from his face, and it was entirely vexing when he looked at her like he was now; her heart beat a little faster and her skin warmed. She _didn’t want_ to be warm. It was already too hot, and Bill was already too smug.  
  
“Oh yeah?” His gaze shifted to a lock of blond hair tickling her neck and his mind flashed with an image he should have banished directly. Instead he reached out to brush it away, the rough pads of his fingers dragging against her skin. Her breath caught and blue gazes met. Any more moments like this and he wouldn’t be able to be her mentor anymore. “Like what, dove?”  
  
She was too aware, too hot, too irritated and too impatient to put off what she’d been thinking on longer than was likely proper. Reaching out, Fleur fisted her hand in his tank and pulled him down, lips pressing against his moments before she nipped, _hard_. There were no errant thoughts she would be turned away; no one turned her away, but she was entirely unprepared for the iron band of his arm slipping around her and pulling her flush to him, his mouth moving against hers, _demanding_ , and his hands moving over her, not shy in the least.  
  
She should be angry at his presumptuousness, nevermind her own, but thought was rather distant when his growl reverberated through her, and she reached from him, nails scraping down his neck as she pulled herself up his body.


	9. Undisclosed Desires (Sirius Black/Bellatrix Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for hp_humpdrabbles on LiveJournal. The prompt used was the song "Undisclosed Desires" by Muse.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes, cousincest.

_I want to satisfy the undisclosed desires in your heart…_  
  
Her breath was soft against his skin. Light, warm pants breathed over his shoulder as he moved in her, pressed her roughly against the wall where he had finally broken down and taken her. It was so at odds with the bloody furrows she had already ripped into his back, the dangerously dark and seductively terrible things she had said to goad him into this.  
  
Her lips skimmed the muscle of his neck and he wound his hand in her hair, tried to ignore the silky softness of it as he pulled her away from him to catch her gaze. Her eyes were a dusky blue, focus nearly gone but for the ever present spark of intensity.  
  
"Don't pretend this is more than what it is, Bella," he growled, hand tightening in her hair to pull painfully. Her lips parted, red and swollen; tempting beyond reason and just as sickening.  
  
"I am your reconciliation," she breathed as she pressed her back against the wall to roll her hips with his. A tiny sound slipped her and she scraped her nails down his chest, a slow smile curling her lips when he hissed and drove all the harder. "I'm the violence in your heart."  
  
Quick as the viper she was, Bella's hand was in his hair, gripping as painfully tight, her breath warm against his mouth. "Please me, Siri," she murmured against his lips, "Exorcise your demons."  
  
It was the childhood nickname, the soft, low timber of it spoken without the usual taunt and menace that had Sirius pulling her to him. Her mouth was his, her body was his, was _always_ meant to be his.  
  
Bella's beauty was a mask. He knew it and he hated himself as her name fell from his lips, hated that he clung to her as much as she clung to him. He hated that the blood he could taste on her tongue made it all the sweeter.  
  
Bellatrix truly would be the end of him. She was wicked and divine, and he could not exorcise _her_.


	10. Temptations of the Damned (Sirius Black/Bellatrix Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for hp_humpdrabbles on LiveJournal. Prompts used were 'lead me not into temptation' and 'Death Eaters'.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes, cousincest, roughness.

  
_Lead me not into temptation…_  
  
"You will blame me for this." It was nothing more than truth plainly spoken, but Bella's dusky blue eyes were intent and full of dark things. "You wait here for me, but this will be my fault. You will not have it any other way."  
  
"It's always your fault, Bella. You trick and mislead, and do not think I'm unaware of the path you've carved in many a heart and mind." Sirius closed in on her, eyes dark as obsidian as he looked down at her. He hated that she was beautiful, hated more that they had once been intended and that he _regretted_ it was no longer so.  
  
A smile found it's way onto carmine lips and Bellatrix traced the line of his jaw. "You care for no one's heart or mind but your own."  
  
In a sudden move, she raked her nails down his neck. She had always wanted this, but he had chosen _them_. He had forsaken his blood, and for that she would turn him in on himself, over and over - because he wanted her, and because she wanted him, and because Bella knew he would hate himself for it. "You only care that it is not you I plunder, no? Or perhaps it is that you fear you will lose yourself to what we should be."  
  
His hand was at her throat and a growl rumbled from him. "We will _never_ be anything, Bella."  
  
"And yet," she said breathlessly with what little air she could get, "you are here."  
  
He pressed his fingers in hard enough to bruise the moonlight of her skin. "It means nothing."  
  
Her lids were heavy, breath short, but the violence in his eyes made her shudder and scrape her nails over his skin, into his hair. "It means _everything_."  
  
His lips crashed against hers, teeth biting even as his hands tore at her bodice, pushed at her skirts. Self-loathing was a bitter thing, but the bloodied furrows she'd already left beneath his shirt washed it all away in red ichor. He growled when his hands found skin, traced up her thighs, and in a movement that was just practiced enough to make him hate himself, she was braced against the wall and he was inside her.  
  
It was good, _so good_. Slow and torturous even as she left bite marks at his neck and shoulder. And then he found the end of her and drove hard enough to make her throw her head back against the wall. " _Sirius_."  
  
That he could make Bellatrix Black breath his name like that only set him faster, harder so that they clung to one another as he nuzzled her neck, and the marks he had left.  
  
"I hate you," he murmured against damp skin.  
  
She shuddered, lids heavy as he moved in her. Her touch was tender as she sifted her fingers through his hair. The pleasure-ridden smile curling her lips was nothing but delighted vindication. "I know, my love."


	11. La Petite Mort (Sirius Black/Bellatrix Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for baby_k21 at a 2010 drabble meme. The prompts were 'Bellatrix' and 'shades of grey'.
> 
> Notes: AU timeline since it assumes Sirius and Bellatrix are closer in age than they actually are in canon. This takes place after both have graduated from Hogwarts, but before Harry is born.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes, cousincest.

“You are being outdone this eve, cousin.”  
  
“And if you are not gone posthaste, father will kill you, and if he does not, I will,” Bellatrix drawled before turning slowly to face Sirius. She could smell firewhiskey on his breath, and his eyes were dark with the alcohol he’d consumed. Her mouth turned down in distaste. “You’re drunk. Go home, Siri. If we are to snuff you, then I should like it to be a challenge at the very least.”  
  
Sirius’ hand shot out before she could fully react. His grip was firm on her chin, and he forced her gaze to his. “Don’t ever discount me, Bella,” he said, voice low. All pretense of drunkenness disappeared as he leaned towards her. He considered her features, eyes dropping to her mouth before flicking up to find her burning gaze. He released her abruptly and straightened. “As I said, you are being outdone this eve.”  
  
She raised a brow at him. “I am never outdone.”  
  
His dark eyes flicked over her. He could not truly afford to play these games with his cousin – he was at this damn society ball for a _reason_ \- but nor could he make himself walk away from her. As a child she had been his playmate of choice, but age and so many things had made whatever might have been dreamed by their parents quite impossible now.  
  
It did not change the fact that every part of him screamed that she was his, that he should _claim_ her. Despite his words to the contrary, Bella outshone every debutante in attendance. It didn’t matter that she was dressed in all shades of grey while her contemporaries were the colors of a spring garden in bloom. The black silk only served to make her pale skin iridescent, emphasized the lush curve of her lips. It was lost on no man that those lips were the same crimson shade as blood, as if she had kissed the ichor from the very wounds all knew she was capable of creating. It didn’t matter that the corset of her gown was muted in color - if anything, it was perfection in that it didn’t distract from her curves, the way her chest pressed against the restraint of the bodice with every breath – as if it might release her all together at any moment.  
  
Bellatrix Black was beautiful, and she knew it. “You are the only bloom of the night in attendance. Are you in mourning, cousin?”  
  
“You are transparent, Siri.” She stepped into him, raised hooded blue eyes. “I can _feel_ the way you look at me. There is much between us, but don’t lie about how much you want me.” Her voice dropped, low enough that no one in the crowds just beyond their shadows could possibly hear. “I have felt you in me, have felt how your body strains for mine. I have heard my name as a benediction on your lips. Your _prayer_. You can not lie to me, not of these things.”  
  
Anger sluiced through Sirius, something burning of hatred and guilt. His hands found purchase in a bruising grip on her arms. “I will kill you, Bella. Do not hasten things.”  
  
Her lips curled slightly, mocking amusement. “ _La petite mort_.”  
  
The little death – the moment when pleasure was so great it killed a small part of you in order to bring you back down to earth.  
  
Sirius’ jaw clenched and his grip tightened. Crimson lips parted for the pain he was now causing, her lids drooped and she leaned into his grasp. He knew her, knew that he should let go and walk away. He knew that taking his anger out on her would make her shudder and cling to him, whisper his name, everything she would never say in words wrapped up in that one soft murmur. _La petite mort_.  
  
He hated her. He hated himself even more for what he was about to do.  
  
Sirius growled and released her arms, but moments later his grip was firm on her wrist. The tattoo etched into her skin burned against his palm, but it did not stop him from pulling her roughly through the crowd towards the nearest exit. He strode past several closed doors, turned a corner and then pushed through the next door available. His mind supplied that it was a well appointed sitting room, but what ultimately prompted him to stay and pull Bella in behind him only to slam her up against the closed door, was that it was empty. “This means nothing,” he told her as he pinned her hands above her head.  
  
“Oh, Siri. If only you would stop lying to yourself.” The look in her eye mocked him, _dared_ him, but there was a wisp of melancholic truth. _If only …_  
  
He didn’t want to hear anymore of her words and feel the true slice of them to his very core, and so he silenced her in the most effective way he had ever found. His mouth found hers and he _drank_. He drank like a man lost in the desert who’d found the only quench to his thirst. He bruised her mouth, bit at her lips for ruining him for all others, for making him crave her.  
  
“I hate you, _mia Bella_ ,” he breathed even as he released her wrists, hands skimming to smooth over her neck, cup her jaw and slide into her hair.  
  
“You lie. Over and over, you lie,” she told him as she ripped at the buttons of his vest and shirt beneath. “You hate yourself for loving me.”  
  
Her hands found his skin and he hissed into her neck, nipped the soft flesh. “It is you who believe lies, you who chose a madman over me.” And that was the crux. She had chosen _him_ , had betrothed herself to one of his followers. _She_ had made choices that were all but what could have been. Though she would say different, say that _he_ had discounted their blood, their family – their destiny.  
  
It was an impasse that would one day see the demise of one or the other. There was no other possible end.  
  
That day was not this day, however, and Sirius tasted her because he could, because she should have been his. He skimmed his mouth down her throat until he came to the generous swell of her breast. His bite would leave a mark, and he growled into her skin when she raked her nails through his hair – pain for pain.  
  
“We are all mad, Siri,” she murmured as she ripped at his clothes, divested him of jacket, vest and shirt. “I have always been quite mad, and you as well, though you try to hide from it. It doesn’t have to be that way,” she breathed, fingers tight in his hair as she pulled him roughly up and away from her chest, “we could have reveled in it together.” She brought his mouth back to hers then, bruised _his_ lips.  
  
Perhaps in an anarchic dream, but here where life was lived, fate had decided differently. Fate had let them taste everything that could have been, but would never be. It was cruel, something that would truly drive a person to madness. It was fitting for the heirs of the most noble house of Black. Theirs was a legacy of greatness, to be sure, but it was a glory gained in pain and darkness. For a scion of the house of Black, there was only destruction.  
  
Even now as Sirius pulled at her skirts, lifted them to expose the heat of her flesh to his touch, he knew their end was nothing but death - _la petite mort_.  
  
“There is _nothing_ for us,” he growled even as she pulled at his belt and he lifted her against the door. “I will never let myself be anything like you, _them_. My blood is yours, but it will not rule me. _Ever_ ,” he said as he filled her in one hard thrust. She was tight, painfully so, but it made them both shudder.  
  
It was rough. There were nails and teeth, and the copper tang of blood scented the air as she ripped into his back, licked the seeping wounds her teeth made. Bruises would mark the paleness of her skin, but it was the vivid, angry imprint of teeth on her shoulder that she gloried in. Sirius suppressed his nature, the darkness inside of him, but not when he was with her. The evidences of who he _really_ was littered her body. She loved it, for he hated it so, gloried in it for it would turn him in on himself. Mayhap he would never be hers in this life, never choose as she had, but he was ruined for all others. He was _hers_ , body and soul. She was his beginning, and she would be his end.  
  
“Say it, Siri,” she breathed as she clung to him. No more nails, no teeth. They were so close, _so close_ , and she held onto him as tightly as she could, used the door at her back and her heels at the base of his spine to meet every roll of hips. “Say it.”  
  
Sirius raised his gaze to hers. There was a hazy darkness in her blue eyes that he knew reflected his own. There was also calculated amusement. He glared at her. “No.” He would never say he loved her.  
  
“I can see it in your eyes. It matters not whether you voice it,” she panted, lips parting moments later in a strained gasp as he hit the end of her.  
  
Perhaps he might have bitten back with words, but in that moment the weight of heat at their core shifted into something that _must_ be sated, something they could do nothing but race towards. One hand gripped tightly at her hip, but Sirius moved the other up her spine over the corset and pressed her harder into the door even as he held her closer to him. “With me, Bella,” he panted into her neck.  
  
There was no reply from her but the strengthening of her grip on him, the rake of her nails through his hair before she wrapped her arm around his neck, let her lids flutter and pressed her lips to his hair. “I always was. It was you who left me behind.” If it was at all possible their movements quickened, but before they fell over the edge, her lips brushed his ear in a hot whisper. “This is love, Siri, and I will kill you for it someday.”  
  
And then the world fell apart. _La petite mort_.


	12. Sisters Three, We Can Never Be (Andromeda Black, Bellatrix Black, Narcissa Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for pyrobear at a 2010 drabble meme. She gave me the prompts of 'Bellatrix, Andromeda and Narcissa' and 'what being Black means'.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.”  
  
Andromeda stilled. It _couldn’t_ be. “This isn’t possible. I have not invited you by blood.”  
  
“You know better than that, Andi,” Bella told her, voice warm and inviting. Dangerous. “Come, Cissy. Come see what has become of our sister.”  
  
This was _her_ dream, dammit. Andromeda had not bloodied her third eye and she was a skilled Occlumens. Bellatrix and Narcissa shouldn’t be able to invade her mind like this. She eyed the two women warily as they approached her. They were cloaked in dark robes, elegant and lovely. Their mind’s projections of themselves did not exaggerate. Andromeda could see her own blue eyes in both their faces, the sharp line of her cheekbones in Bella, the softness of her mouth in Narcissa. These were truly her sisters, and despite the danger inherent to their very presence in her dream, something in Andromeda ached for them. They were hers, and she theirs.   
  
Once upon a time.  
  
Now, they were her bane, her hunters, her tormentors. Everything they were countered everything she was trying to be, everything she had found in Ted. She took a step back from them as they approached. They could not hurt her, not truly, but she could still feel pain here.  
  
“We are blood, Andi. I do not need yours, for mine will do. We are one and the same.” Bellatrix’s features hardened then, dark blue eyes flinty. “You have forgotten where you come from, what it means to be Black.”   
  
Narcissa sniffed. “You look like a Muggle, sister.”  
  
“Stay out of this, Cissy,” Andromeda hissed, eyes lingering on her delicately blonde little sister only a moment before sliding back to the real threat. “What do you want, Bella. There’s nothing to be had here. I have nothing to give, and I will not return. I care not for your Dark Lord, or your elitist pigheaded ways. If Mother and Father sent you, then do feel free to tell them to piss off.”  
  
Warm laughter filled the space around them, a touchable thing that slid across one’s skin. It made a shiver go down Andromeda’s spine. She had expected more of Bella’s anger, not her amusement. She was afraid, but her pulse quickened still.  
  
“Andi, Andi,” Bella said, voice lilting as she released the youngest Black’s hand and stepped past Narcissa. “Can it be so impossible that we miss you?” she asked as she lifted a hand to pet softly down Andromeda’s hair. Bella met her younger sister’s gaze and the slant of her mouth turned hard in her amusement. “No, you know that cannot be so, not for a blood traitor.” She gripped her sister’s chin, nails digging into her skin. “We have come to warn you, sister.”  
  
 _I cannot be hurt here, I cannot be hurt here._ “That seems counterintuitive. You should just kill me in my sleep and be done with it.” They were brave words – words inflected with the same tone that had seen storm out the door of Grimmauld Place, never to return.   
  
“Oh, I do plan on killing you,” Bella all but purred. “But you will fear my coming. You will fear what I will do to your filthy Muggleborn husband. You will fear what I will do to that abomination in your womb.” A slow smile curved her lips as Andromeda’s eyes widened. “Oh yes, sister. You cannot hide it from me. Not here. You are tainted with him, and that thing inside of you. Perhaps we might have taken you back, but you can never truly be Black again.”  
  
Bella released her and Andromeda stumbled back, hands moving to cover the child that was growing inside of her. Bella could threaten her all she liked, but not her family – not her _child_. Andromeda’s features turned icy in her anger. “I will kill you.”  
  
Another touchable laugh echoed. “Ah, Andi, there is still some Black to you.” Bella’s features hardened then and something glinted in her hand as she pulled it from her robes. “Too little, too late, sister,” she said before she struck, knife sliding home, right into Andromeda’s heart.  
  
...  
  
Andromeda woke with a start, hand going straight to her heart as she sat up in bed. Her skin was clammy with a cold sweat, her pulse was racing and though it shouldn’t, she could swear there was an ache in her chest where Bella had struck.  
  
“Dromeda?” The voice was gravelly with sleep.  
  
“Just a bad dream, love,” she told Ted as she felt around the blankets for his hand and gave it a squeeze. There was no need to worry him. She loved her husband more than anything, but he was Muggleborn. He didn’t understand the old rites, the blood magics. He didn’t understand what it was she came from. He didn’t understand the Blacks, and she didn’t want him to.   
  
“Want me to get you anything?” he asked groggily, though his eyes didn’t open.  
  
A soft smile curled Andromeda’s lips and the frantic beat of her heart began to slow. “No, I’ll be fine. Just go back to sleep,” she murmured as she leaned over to press a kiss to his brow. Oh, how she loved him. He was everything she’d been missing. Warmth and love, caring and compassion, ready smiles and adventures.   
  
As Ted’s soft snores filled their bedroom, Andromeda’s gaze went to the window. Her grip tightened on her husband’s hand and her other palm rested on her still-flat belly. She knew there was no one there, but her sister was somewhere out there, and she would haunt them all soon enough. Bella had accomplished what she’d set out to do – Andromeda was afraid. Truly afraid. Her sister was not the type to take life quickly. She liked to make it hurt, to break your mind and watch the life drain from you. If you loved a person, she would kill them slowly while you watched, helpless.   
  
Yes, Andromeda was afraid. She would be a fool not to be. But as her sister had said, there was still some Black in her. She would kill _anyone_ who threatened her family. Even her sister. “You can’t have them, Bella. They’re _mine_.”


	13. Naked As We Came (Harry Potter/Luna Lovegood)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for sister!dobbygrl at a 2010 drabble meme. She requested Harry/Luna with the prompt 'haunted houses'.

“It’s just the poltergeist,” Luna murmured, not even bothering to open her eyes. “Bob likes to think he’s intimidating, but he’s not,” she told him, yawning as wide blue eyes blinked open and she looked to her bedmate. “He gets terribly loud when the attic mice don’t run in abject fear and throws a tantrum nearly every morning.”  
  
He’d been woken by unfamiliar banging noises, glasses on and wand in hand in an instant, but it was becoming apparent that not only was an Auror unneeded, but that he’d slept with Luna Lovegood. As she slipped from the bed, Harry pushed his glasses up nose; she was currently as nude as the day she was born and entirely unconcerned about it if the way she walked to the window and stood in the sunshine was any indication. He supposed that’s how most liaisons went, getting naked, but since he was having a hard time grasping the details of the night prior – he only remembered the War Memorial Gala and the many, many glasses of champagne he’d had – he was still trying to work out the details of how they’d both obviously lost their clothes and ended up at her haunted little cottage.   
  
Dumbledore and Mr. Weasley had not prepared him for this.  
  
“I should go…” He said, heat touching his skin as he moved to pull his pants on.  
  
Luna glanced over and tipped her head. “If you feel the need, but it looks as if the garden gnomes left some berries for me this morning – you’re more than welcome to stay for muffins.” A tiny smile curled her lips as she approached him, large blue eyes shifting down as she reached out to lightly run her fingers against his skin. “You must like pain,” she said, gaze shifting up to his. “It looks as if I bit you very hard.”  
  
Harry blinked behind his glasses and his hands stilled their movement. He would get to zipping and buttoning his pants when a naked Luna wasn’t touching him. “I …” he frowned. “You bit me?”  
  
She pressed her fingers to the bruise on the tendon where neck meets shoulder. When he winced at the slight pressure, she shifted her gaze back up to his. “It seems so.” She blinked wide eyes. “Would you like me to do it again?”  
  
“I… well, you see …” Heat suffused his skin again as Harry tried to find the words – words that just weren’t coming. It should be a simple ‘No’, but he found himself stumbling over what to say to her. He couldn’t even remember the night before, and it’d been a mistake. He and Luna were friends, but he’d never ever thought about her like this before.   
  
It wasn’t difficult to think of her outside the context of friends at the moment, however. Harry tried to keep his eyes on her face, but they kept escaping his control to steal quick glances at the pale, creamy skin she hadn’t bothered to cover up. “… It’s just that… you know… just, yeah,” he finally said, eyes widening slightly at his _agreement_ before he quickly added, “yeah, you know, how about those muffins?”  
  
A twinkle of something seemed to fill Luna’s eyes and a tiny, serene smile curved her mouth before she set her hands lightly on his chest. Harry held his breath as she leaned forward and pressed her lips softly to the bruise on his neck before standing on tip toe to touch her lips to his just as softly. “Muffins sound lovely. You’ll like them. I add bleu cheese and it’s just the thing.”   
  
She moved away from him and Harry watched her exit the bedroom, still nude. Only then did he breathe again. His pulse was pounding and heat burned beneath his skin - the kind that made him understand how he’d ended up in Luna’s bed.   
  
He swallowed and finished buttoning his pants. “Muffins. Right. Get it together, Potter,” he muttered at himself as he collected his white undershirt from atop the cheery yellow lampshade and pulled it over his head.   
  
No, Dumbledore and Mr. Weasley hadn’t prepared him for this. Hell, neither had Fred and George, the bastards.


	14. Screaming Infidelities (Rodolphus Lestrange/Bellatrix Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for dexstarr at Humpathon 2010 at hp_humpdrabbles on LiveJournal. 
> 
> Notes: Sequel to [La Petite Mort](https://archiveofourown.org/works/828231/chapters/1573548).
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes, roughness, swearing.

Bella’s lips curved into a slow smile as she made her way back towards the ballroom.  
  
The scent of him clung to her skin. It meant that she would also permeate his senses, and it was a pleasing thought given Sirius would _loathe_ the scent of her shadowing him. He hated her, but he hated himself more for his weakness, his love for her. It befitted a blood traitor - doubly so for the man who should have been at her side, should have been her betrothed in darkness and glory. He had _left_ her. He deserved nothing but pain, suffering, and death when she willed it.  
  
A strong hand gripped her arm then, swung her around, and Bellatrix’s wand was pointed the moment her back slammed against the wall. Dusky blue eyes blazed at her assailant. “If you ever do that again, I will kill you,” she hissed at Rodolphus. “Unhand me.”  
  
“Fuck you, Bella,” he growled. “We are to be announced - our _fucking betrothal_ , and where are you?” Dark, angry eyes narrowed. “Fucking your cousin.” He hated that he wanted her so much, that she was so beautiful it was like being sliced by the diamond’s edge to look upon her. Rodolphus hated even more that the _damn_ Black whelp had once been her chosen. “You are _mine_.”  
  
The back of his hand met her cheek then and she stumbled, but quick as a viper, Bellatrix rounded on him and her nails raked across his cheek. “I am no man’s,” she spat. “I belong only to our Lord.” Still, the pain blossoming on her cheek had her blood pounding, heat pooling in her.  
  
“You belong to _me_ ,” he told her again as he shoved her back against the wall. The music from the ball wafted down the hall, a gentle reminder that they were wanted, but Rodolphus ignored it. Something had been taken from him tonight and he would reclaim it.  
  
He bent down to meet her gaze and a smirk curled his lips at the quickening of her breath, the darkness in her eyes. “I am your only equal. _I_ am the only one who can satisfy you,” he said confidently. She was wayward and willful, but she _was_ his. “ _I_ am your desire, body, heart and soul.”  
  
He claimed her mouth then, knotted his hands in her hair and forced her to meet him. His Dark Rose bit, scratched at his neck, and mewled for his touch, writhed for him. She tortured her cousin, but _he_ tortured her – loved her. She was his damnation, and he gloried in her. Her skirts were bunched and pushed aside, and then he was in her. Another had been here, but he would take back what had been tainted by filth. They would be perfect, pure, and they would sit at their Lord’s right hand, and _fucking hell_ , she would scream his name like a benediction as she had so many times before.  
  
Bellatrix was his, and only his.


	15. Curious Sinner (Ted Tonks/Andromeda Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for hp_humpdrabbles on LiveJournal.

He was the opposite of everything she’d been taught was acceptable in a beau. He was a Muggleborn, a Gryffindor. He was forbidden and wrong. Tainted. Filthy. Lower than even her father’s prize hunting dogs who were as pure in their breed as she in her own.   
  
She knew those things. She turned her nose up at him in Potions and Herbology as she ought, sniffed at his attempts to speak to her. Still, Andromeda couldn’t help that her eyes followed Ted Tonks when she was sure he wasn’t paying her any mind. She couldn’t help but notice his easy smiles, the way his blonde hair fell into his eyes, and how his laughter shook his whole body and made everyone around him laugh too. She couldn’t help but notice the way everything he was seemed to seep from every pore, was there for anyone to see. He lived out loud. There were no pretenses or guile to Ted Tonks.  
  
Andromeda found she liked watching him despite his birth and circumstance.  
  
Perhaps that’s why she’d kissed him one night in the library. ( _”Just hold still. I should like to see if it is everything I’ve thought it to be,” she told him, dark blue eyes flicking from his mouth and then back to the shock and surprise aimed at her_.)  
  
Perhaps that’s why she’d let him touch her. ( _”Don’t stop, Ted,” she breathed, lashes fluttering as his fingers slipped beneath her lacy knickers, made her shiver._ )  
  
Or perhaps it was why she gave him that which was supposed to be part of her brideprice. ( _”I ... I love you,” she breathed against his mouth, inhaled the answering confession. She clung to him, nails biting into his back as he moved in her, rolled his hips. Her body arched and pink lips parted on a silent scream as he took what she’d been ordered to save for the highest bidder._ )  
  
No, Ted Tonks was all wrong.   
  
But Andromeda learned that in all the ways that really mattered, he was exactly _right_.


	16. Something I Could Never Have (Regulus Black/Narcissa Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for dexstarr at deatheaterfest's 2010 [drabbleathon](http://deatheatercest.livejournal.com/3474.html). The request was for Narcissa and Regulus using the prompts 'stolen moments' and 'fleeting happiness'. The lyrics quoted are from "Something I Could Never Have" by Flyleaf.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes, cousincest.

_In this place it seems like such a shame_   
_Though it all looks different now, I know it's still the same_   
_Everywhere I look, you're all I see_   
_Just a fading reminder of who I used to be_

  
They hadn’t ever been intended for one another, not as Bella and Sirius. The eldest of each brother should have been the shining stars of their family, the pinnacle of Black breeding. Of course, Sirius turned on the blood and their father’s dreams had hardened into something like living nightmares.  
  
There had been no more talk of kissing cousins.  
  
It only meant that where Bella and Sirius could be ostentatious about their hateful affair, Regulus and Narcissa were discreet.  
  
He warmed her with the quiet intensity of his gaze. His lips lingered on her cheek when he greeted her, and she felt the heat of the caress long after they parted. He swallowed her moans and gasps in stolen moments; against the wall, on the chaise or even pressed up against the door in broom closets when they were young. There had never been time for savoring, for a bed and proper romance.  
  
No one knew, and Narcissa had always reveled in their delicious secret.  
  
It wasn’t until he took Tom’s tattoo and her parents sped her through an engagement and marriage to Lucius Malfoy that Narcissa realized he was much more than a childhood dalliance, much more than kissing cousins who were too young to be of much import to their families outside of pacts, covenants and marriages.  
  
She loved him.

_I just want something  
I just want something I can never have_

  
It was a bed. A gloriously opulent bed.  
  
“Regulus...” Narcissa glanced over her shoulder at him.  
  
“We deserve this, at least once,” he said as he came up beside her, linked his fingers with hers.  
  
His eyes were sooty gray, and just that moment they were dark as the ashes in the grate. There was heat in their depths, and Narcissa cupped his cheek. “Just once, my love?” A tiny smirk curled her lips. “I should think we can manage more than once this eve, no?”  
  
A grin much like his brother’s slid across his features. “I think we can manage it,” he agreed before swooping her off her feat and tossing her on the duvet.  
  
They both knew it was an illusion, of course. She was a Malfoy and he was a traitor. But it was just one night and they deserved what should have been theirs; a bed, and time to explore each other, to consecrate the promises they had made to one another long, long ago.

_You make this all go away  
You make this all go away_

  
“Don’t cry, Cissa,” he breathed, lips tracing the column of her throat.  
  
“I’m not.” She was. “ _Just don’t stop_.”  
  
And he didn’t. Their hips moved in tandem, faster, faster. Pale pink nails scraped furrows into his back even as aristocrat’s fingers teased through blonde curls, made her call his name. Lips drank, erased tears, goodbyes, and regrets. Skin glistened alabaster in the moonlight as their bodies twined and shuddered, arched into the thundering release that shook them to their very souls.  
  
This had been the aligning of stars their father’s had hoped for, the purity of blood and of family.  
  
It was never to be.

_I still recall the taste of your tears_   
_Echoing your voice just like the ringing in my ears_   
_My favorite dreams of you still wash ashore_   
_Scraping through my head til I don't want to sleep anymore_


	17. Rules of Engagement (Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Malfoy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for dexstarr at a 2010 drabble meme. She requested Lucius/Narcissa using the prompt 'sleigh ride'.

They could both see the Thestrals pulling their winter sleigh.  
  
Narcissa had been in the sickroom when her mother’s father had breathed his last, or so she’d been told. She couldn’t recall anything but the septic smell of the room and the mournful expression on her mother’s face; the imperious woman hadn’t worried at what she exposed with only her dead father and tiny child to witness.   
  
It was the latter detail that was truly burned in her memory, the brokenness. Her mother was anything but soft. She was as rigid with expectation as her father, but the one memory had taught Narcissa that she was fallible. As were they all. She’d found it was just a trick of discerning the type of mask a person wore, and then finding the cracks and fault lines that would allow for the easiest route of exploitation.   
  
She’d been naught but a child, but death had taught her much.  
  
She glanced over at Lucius and wondered what death he had witnessed. “You will tell me, yes?”  
  
He smirked. He’d been expecting the question. She was canny – canny enough to discern that he could see what pulled their sleigh along. She had given herself away in the asking, however, and it only amused him further. She was several years his junior and wouldn’t even be out of school until the following spring, but she was twice the woman of the other debutantes out in society. She played a fine game and would only sharpen further when fully out among their peers. That she was ethereally beautiful made her all the more desirable.  
  
He met her ice blue gaze. “Will you allow me the pleasure of holding your hand?”   
  
It would be a bargain then. Narcissa weighed what might be lost, and gauged that the simple contact through her kid gloves was something she could afford to lose.   
  
She nodded and pulled her hand from the mink muff. He seemed inordinately pleased with himself and she found it particularly irritating. “Do speak now.”  
  
A tiny smirk curled Lucius’ lips and grey eyes met hers. “Will I have to bargain for every good grace?”  
  
She sniffed. “If you are worthy, then you will figure such things out yourself.” Narcissa knew her father desired a marriage between she and the Malfoy heir, but she was loathe to bind herself to any man who could not at least match her at the games they would be forced to play as a pair in society, especially given the darkness that loomed.   
  
She pulled her gaze away from his distractingly handsome features and focused on the sleigh ahead of them. Her mouth turned down. Of course Bella would be indecorous enough to engage in such activities with her fiancé for any wandering eye to see. The sooner these silly holiday sleigh rides were over, the better.  
  
“Speak, Mr. Malfoy. You have what you bargained for.”   
  
“Indeed,” he said. Tom’s mark etched into his skin was sign enough of the deaths he had witnessed, but she was only inquiring about one in particular; the first. “It was a distant cousin.”  
  
Narcissa glanced at him sharply, brows furrowing. “And?”  
  
Lucius’ lips curled slightly. “And I should like to hold your hand without the glove. I promise I will keep you warm.”  
  
Her eyes narrowed. Despite the icy glare, Narcissa was pleased. She had neglected to set explicit parameters to their initial bargain and he had capitalized on her lack of detail. Perhaps he could keep up after all. “Very well.”  
  
He did keep her hand warm, though it might have been because she was incrementally more inclined toward the kind of warmth a Malfoy could offer.


	18. Ever After (Draco Malfoy/Ginny Weasley)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for 13oct at a 2010 drabble meme. She requested Draco/Ginny with the prompt 'freshness'.

**_At first._**  
  
Children were oblivious of such things as class and politics. Perhaps that’s why Draco kissed her. Class and politics definitely wasn’t why she gave him a black eye though – that was for spitting on her lips. The twins had taught her well, after all. She was tiny and only seven, but such things as a proper right hook were important in her home.  
  
Draco learned to throw a right hook as well. Ginny liked the black eyes better than the dreadful kisses.   
  
**_And then._**  
  
They grew up, of course. They learned that Draco was rich and pure, and terribly rotten about most everything (especially getting his way, though Ginny was sure he’d always been like that), and that Ginny was poor (though pure, but the flaming ginger hair was the problem, Draco came to understand) and she was hot-tempered, and still liked practicing her right hook on him.   
  
But then she also liked those kisses now. They made her hot all over, just like being irritated with him, but even _better_. Draco was rather pleased with these developments. Besides his knowledge of her station and his intimate acquaintance with her fist, he learned that she smelled of fresh cut grass, sun-dried linens and spring flowers, and that she tasted sweet, like strawberries, _everywhere_.  
  
 ** _But now._**  
  
It was the way of things that when you were content and happy, that it wouldn’t last, Draco had learned. Happiness was an illusion. The truth was He Who Must Not Be Named, and the evidence of such absolutism was etched painfully into his arm.   
  
Her disgust was his reality. Fear, guilt, shame. These were the things that came to define him.   
  
Ginny learned that she should have listened to her family, that tiny voice in the back of her mind that said Draco was no good (then again, Ginny ignored any voice which wasn’t audible – Tom had made sure of that. Now _he_ had been no good.).   
  
He hated himself, and she hated that he had betrayed what they could have been. It should have been different.   
  
**_Then after._**  
  
It was, of course – different, that is. Voldemort was defeated and like when all megalomaniacs are destroyed, the world and life looked a little different after. Brighter. Things seemed possible. Impossible things.  
  
Draco still regretted the choices he had made, and Ginny still knew that Draco was no good, but when they were Draco and Ginny, together all in one breath like that, he found forgiveness and hope, and she found that maybe he wasn’t any good, but with her, he was just right, a better man.  
  
 ** _And ever after._**  
  
Despite his family and her own, they made promises. There were rings and a ceremony, Ron glaring (Draco smirking) and Molly crying. Narcissa sniffed at everything with disdain (and got on famously with Fleur, of course) and Lucius wore a sour expression (though, when didn’t he? Ginny had always been of the opinion that he must have something _very large_ shoved up his arse to cause such an expression). The twins made things explode.   
  
All things considered, it was everything Draco and Ginny could have hoped for. Family and forever, sealed with a kiss that made Percy turn scarlet and sputter (“Well, I _never_.”), and Pansy’s lips curl in a pleased smile (“Never, Mr. Weasley? That can be remedied…”). If Draco groped at Ginny’s arse on the altar for effect, it was studiously Not Spoken Of these days. One could only push Ron so far.  
  
They had their ever after, much to their surprise (and pink-haired babies, much to everyone else’s).  
  
 ** _The End._**


	19. Long, Long Time Ago (Sirius Black/Bellatrix Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for beyondbones at a 2010 drabble meme. She asked for Sirius/Bellatrix using the prompt 'stockings'.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes, cousincest, biting.

His expression was inscrutable, and it both irked and intrigued Bella. Sirius was prone to dramatics and self-loathing when he fell prey to her machinations and ended up in her bed. The stoically silent man gazing into the fire was far from the pithy Gryffindor blood-traitor he had let himself become, however.  
  
She shifted and the sheet fell down her body, but Bella was unconcerned with the cool air prickling her skin. What had the whole of her attention was the cousin who should have been by her side. His hair was as dark as her own, inky against the shadows cloaking him. He was not so pale as she, and the fire dancing in the grate cast a golden glow upon his bareness. These things were pleasing to note – Siri had always been particularly handsome – but it was the way he lounged in the large highback, the repose of his hand on the arm of the chair that made Bella pause and simply observe. It was the slight furrow of his brow and the tiniest downward tilt of his mouth. It was that he was still, though every sinew of his body hinted at action and potential only temporarily contained.  
  
He looked confident, in control and powerful. He looked the Black that he should have been.  
  
Longing welled in her, and skittering not far behind was the desire and all-consuming want that made her who she was. Bella was familiar with her passions, but the longing was so long unfelt that it was sticky with cobwebs. Once, when she was very young, she had longed for him. She had longed for him in ways she hadn’t yet understood. She had longed for him to be hers always, as he was those days when they raced through her mother’s gardens and had snuck out to soak themselves in the rain and woo thunderstorms.  
  
They had been naught but children.

Bella’s eyes narrowed on him, and she pushed that one, pure emotion aside. He did not deserve such, not even in her memories. He had made his choices, and they hadn’t included her.  
  
She would kill him for it, but not this eve. Tonight she would have her fill of him and make him love it, love _her_. She would riddle him with regret and disgust over his own actions. She would tear him apart from the inside out. It was what he deserved.  
  
She slid from the bed, snatched a bit of silk hanging from the bedpost and stalked toward him. She was nearly silent, but his eyes slid toward her anyway, dark and unfathomable. Where she would normally taunt him, Bella was as silent as he as she came to stand before him and let him observe how the firelight loved the bareness of her skin as well. When his dark eyes lifted from their perusal to meet her own dusky blue gaze, her lips turned ever so slightly at the corners, knowledge and power in that tiny shift, and she lifted her foot to rest in the bit of space between his legs.  
  
He stayed still and kept her gaze as she bent to slide the silk stocking over her foot. They had been a holiday gift from Narcissa – Christmas stockings, she had called them, for the deep crimson color. In the dimly lit room, the silk was the color of spilled blood against her pale skin, and she smoothed it over her calf, inched it up her thigh.  
  
Sirius kept her gaze as she pulled on the second stocking, but she could see how she affected him, could _feel_ the tension in him, and it sang through her. “Do it, Siri.”  
  
He did.  
  
That contained power erupted and his hands were on her, bruising at her hips as he pulled her toward him, met her halfway to sink his teeth into the tendon of muscle at the juncture of her thigh. A gasp of both pain and pleasure slipped her lips, and something like triumph lit her eyes before the world was lost to the heat.


	20. Morning After (Draco Malfoy/Astoria Greengrass)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for hp_humpdrabbles on LiveJournal.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes.

His hands were everywhere; stroking down her sides, gripping her hips, tracing her thighs.  
  
Astoria’s lips parted on a gasp and she arched into his touch, the heat of his mouth over her skin, down her throat. Her heart pounded in her chest, too fast and not fast enough. She slid her fingers into his hair and pulled at the fine blonde strands when he nipped at the swell of her breast, played a rosy nipple to a sensitive peak with his tongue before sucking until she shivered. Heat sluiced down her spine, made her cry out, and when he slid his fingers through her folds where she burned, it was to find her wet and waiting.  
  
One digit slipped inside of her, then two, and then Astoria’s body was arched like a taut bow even as she …  
  
… woke up.  
  
Her breathing was quick and harsh in the hushed quiet of the beach side bungalow, skin damp with the warmth from her dream. There was even the unfulfilled ache making her heart pound, and Astoria fell back down to the pillow, eyes shutting again in frustration.  
  
It was only when she shifted, felt a body next to her, that she realized it wasn’t a dream, but a recollection. Daphne’s wedding on the beach, the reception afterward, and too many glasses of champagne.  
  
Draco.  
  
She glanced over her shoulder and the faintness of dawn illuminating the one room abode revealed downy blond hair buried in the pillow next to hers. Good gods, she really had slept with the bastard. It was so damn cliché for the maid of honor and the best man to fall into bed together. She was never, ever going to live this down, and Draco was never, ever going to leave her alone. He would smirk and snark and generally make himself more insufferable than he was usually wont to be. Ugh.  
  
Slipping from the bed as quietly as she could, Astoria shimmied into her tiny black bridesmaid dress and collected her heels. Her knickers were mysteriously missing, but there was nothing to be done, and so she tried to ease the door open without making a sound.  
  
“Harlot.” The voice was sleep grizzled, but amused.  
  
She froze, though irritation buzzed through her moments later and she pushed through the door and slammed it hard behind her.  
  
Draco smirked and shut his eyes again. _His_ harlot. Maybe not yet, but she would be.


	21. Say You Don't Want It (Sirius Black/Narcissa Malfoy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for hp_humpdrabbles on LiveJournal.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes, cousincest.

Hers weren't the lips he wanted.  They weren't full and painted red and they did not curl into the infuriating smirk that induced him to violence, or release the mirthful, low laughter that tickled disturbingly down his spine.    
  
Narcissa was not Bellatrix.  
  
But then, he wasn't Regulus and Sirius knew that for his pale cousin, he, too, was a poor substitute.  
  
At times such as these, however, all that really mattered was the heat between them.  She was just as hungry as he was and they were the closest they could get to the cousins they truly wanted.  They did not speak of it, did not speak of the longing, or repulsion, or self-disgust.  They did not linger on what it was they did.  They each had their reasons and understood the need for them to remain unspoken.  What they needed from each other was an indulgence, a reminder, a satiation of an addiction that should have never existed.  
  
When Sirius pushed Narcissa up against a wall in the dark, shadowed alleyway, tipped her head back and captured her lips, she did not push him away.  No, Narcissa slid her hands through the inky dark hair he knew reminded her of his brother and pulled him closer.  Sirius did not care.  Her hips were not so full beneath his hands as her sister, but the throaty, gasping moan that slipped her lips when he filled her was the same.  
  
What he wanted was madness and what she wanted was gone.  What they found in each other would do.  For now.


	22. Marry You (Fred Weasley/Angelina Johnson)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for fiery_flamingo while trying to work my way through a bout of writer's block. The song quoted in the text is "Marry You" by Bruno Mars.
> 
> Warnings: swearing.

It was inevitable, really. Even though Angelina and Fred were completely lucid drunks, they were bound to royally fuck up at some point. It wasn’t as if either was known for sound judgment.  
  
But there are fuck ups, and then there are fuck ups.

_Well, I know this little chapel on the boulevard_   
_We can go, no one will know_   
_Come on, girl_   
_Who cares if we’re trashed?_   
_I’ve got a pocket full of cash we can blow_   
_Shots of Patron, and it’s on girl_

It wasn’t even that bad an idea. Theoretically. If you squinted.  
  
They fucked each other senseless on a regular basis, anyway. They were even friends. On most days, anyway.  
  
It was just that they fucked each other senseless on a regular basis _to escape emotional attachment_ , and they were only amicable friends when they weren’t butting heads, which seemed to be every waking moment except those of euphoric afterglow.  
  
Waking up married when one didn’t intend to wake up married was usually a bad way to start said marriage. Angelina wasn’t the marrying kind, and neither was Fred.  
  
They were more the gone-before-the-sun-rises and I-don’t-remember-names kind.

_If we wake up and you wanna break up, that’s cool_   
_No, I won’t blame you_   
_It was fun, girl_

They only stuck out the first months after their drunken fuck up because everyone said it was a fuck up, that _they_ were both fuck ups. If they agreed on anything, however, it was that everyone could just piss off.  
  
No one was really sure they’d survive each other. _They_ didn’t really know if they’d survive each other, but they were stubborn enough to stick it out on principle alone. Neither would dare be the first to say they couldn’t take it, that marriage was too hard. It didn’t matter that they hadn’t meant to get married.  
  
The saying is that pride cometh before a fall, but for Fred and Angelina, pride was often the only thing that kept them from walking out the door.

_It’s a beautiful night_   
_We’re looking for something dumb to do_   
_Hey, baby, I think I want to marry you_

And then one day they woke up, entwined and naked (which was their favorite way to start the day), and realized they _liked_ being married to each other. They liked waking up next to someone who mattered. They learned that love did hurt, just like they thought, but that it was just a small part of the whole, that the good parts of love could far outweigh all the bad.  
  
No one could have guessed it would last for fifty years, three children, two dogs, six kneazles, and a smatter of grandchildren. Most especially Fred and Angelina.  
  
 _It’s a beautiful night, we’re looking for something dumb to do, hey, baby, I think I want to marry you…_


	23. Our Souls Are All We Own (Harry Potter/Luna Lovegood)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for autumnrhythm30 for a 2011 drabble meme. She requested a 'post-war comfort fic featuring Luna'.

“You should come inside soon, Harry. It’s getting cold.”  
  
He glanced over his shoulder at the willowy blonde. “Not because the nargles turn into werebeasts in the light of the full moon?” he joked half-heartedly.  
  
Luna’s brow furrowed slightly. “Of course not. Nargles aren’t affected by the phases of the moon at all. The Dipsies can be irksome this time of year though, moonlight or no.”   
  
Harry’s lips twitched at Luna’s typically serious response. He still wasn’t convinced Nargles existed. “Dipsies. Of course.”  
  
His gaze swung back to the horizon then. The sun would disappear over the mountains in a matter of minutes and then what was left of Hogwarts would be swathed in darkness. The scars left by the war would near disappear without the scrutiny of sunlight, but the coming of night couldn’t dim his memories. He couldn’t forget the blood, or the tears, or the death. He couldn’t forget Fred and Remus and Tonks, or Lavender’s unseeing eyes and the blood dripping from Fenrir’s chin.  
  
He heard the soft pad of Luna’s shoes on the stone, and moments later she settled next to him on the school’s front step. She didn’t say anything, didn’t try to hold his hand or give him a hug, or even offer platitudes.   
  
It was nice.   
  
The moon was high in the sky and the stars were diamonds on an inky black tapestry when Harry finally spoke again. “Everything’s supposed to go back to normal. Finish school, become an Auror. Rebuild. That’s what they say.”  
  
“I suppose,” Luna said, voice breathy and soft. “But I wouldn’t know how to get back to such a place, myself. I’ve always been quite odd.”  
  
Harry’s lips twitched again.  
  
“And besides,” she said as she swung her gaze from the stars to her companion, “it really all depends on what normal means. Your normal was a bit different than everyone else’s, don’t you think?”  
  
Harry turned and looked at her then, his eyes meeting hers in the moonlit darkness. “Was?”  
  
“Oh yes, you can’t go back to it,” she said, “You were The Boy Who Lived and The Boy Who Kept Living and then The Boy Who Lived Twice.” She tilted her head to the side and the moonlight made her blonde hair look flaxen and colorless. “But you’re not that person anymore. That kind of normal won’t exist ever again. It’s only about you now, and you've not gotten to know The Boy Who Just Lived and Was Content.”  
  
“… yeah.” And that was exactly it. He was restless and confused and frustrated; how did he reconcile his past with his present? Who was he without Voldemort always trying to kill him? What was he supposed to do with his life? Harry hadn’t really thought he’d make it to his eighteenth birthday, let alone see a world free of Voldemort’s terror and get a chance to live in it. The problem was he didn’t know _how_ to live in a world that didn’t have Voldemort.   
  
“I think I forgot how to do anything but survive,” he admitted with a glance at his companion.   
  
Luna smiled serenely and reached out to pat his hand. “You know what to do then. You’ve been doing it all along.” She left her hand atop his and lifted her eyes back up to the sky, still trying to spy Orion or Cassiopeia. “Just survive. You’ll learn how to live along the way.”  
  
Harry stared at her hand on his and wondered at the warmth in his chest from her touch. “Baby steps, huh?”  
  
She glanced at him, smile still curling her lips. “Yes, something like that. Don’t worry so much. You did your bit to save the world.” She pointed up at the sky. “Now it’s time to enjoy what you saved.”   
  
Harry looked up to where she pointed and his eyes widened.   
  
“It’s the Dipsies,” she told him. “They’re dancing.”  
  
And they were. Like the fairies in Muggle tales, glowing bright against the night sky as they danced on the treetops of the Forbidden Forest. “I thought they were irksome this time of year?”  
  
“Oh, they are, to be sure. It is mating season, after all.”   
  
“Right. Of course.” Harry grinned then, for real, and it felt good.


	24. You May Be A Sinner (But Your Innocence is Mine) (Scabior/Hermione Granger)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the_woods_ at the [2011 Wishlist Event](http://rarepair-shorts.livejournal.com/416267.html) at rarepair_shorts on LiveJournal. The song lyrics quoted are by "Eyes on Fire" by Blue Foundation.
> 
> Inspired by Woods' gift for me at the Wishlist Event ("[Sweet Dreams](http://rarepair-shorts.livejournal.com/408011.html)").

_I seek you out, flay you alive  
One more word and you won't survive_

This was all her fault.  
  
Scabior didn't know who she was. He couldn't see her face, and he didn't know the timbre of her voice. He didn't know the feel of her skin or the warmth of her breath. He knew nothing but the scent of her, soft and spicy.  
  
He should have listened to his gut, the nagging feeling that had distracted him since that night; the scent hadn't belonged to the forest, or to the night. Even now he could clearly recall how the spice had filled his lungs, warm as if he had breathed it from the source. If he closed his eyes, he could almost _feel_ the curve of her jaw as he nuzzled to the spot just beneath her ear where the scent would be strongest. And it was so soft, barely there. It would be _necessary_ to be close enough to press his lips to her skin; it would be the only way to fully breathe in the scent that had very briefly teased his senses.  
  
Awake or asleep, she was there. She was obscured in shadow, but for the damn smell of her. Scabior just wanted to be rid of her; he wanted her out of his thoughts, out of his nose, out of his dreams. She haunted him.  
  
Scabior hadn't ever liked ghosts. He didn't like living phantoms any better.

_I'm taking it slow, feeding my flame_  
 _Shuffling the cards of your game_  
 _And just in time, in the right place_  
 _Suddenly I will play my ace_

  
Scabior pressed the delicately woven material to his nose again. It wasn't the first, nor would it be the last. The forest debris crunched softly beneath his boots as he led his Snatchers through the dense wood. The air was cool against his skin and the damp mist clung to him, a gentle reminder that winter was not quite over. His dark eyes flicked about, ever alert for movement.  
  
Even so, all his thoughts were on her, on the dreams he'd had of her the night before, and the night before that. She was close enough now that he could breathe her in all hours of the day and night; she was more vivid in his mind than ever. Now when he closed his eyes, he could feel her breath stirring his hair when he found the sweet spot beneath her ear, knew that her pulse would pound deliciously beneath his lips, that her breath would hitch at the contact.  
  
She was a tease. A sadist. She'd left the scarf to drive him mad.  
  
Perhaps it had worked. Scabior felt unhinged. Driven to find her. What he would do with her, he didn't know; part of him wanted to snuff her out for driving him to such a precipice and another part of him wanted to know if she tasted the way she smelled.  
  
The only thing he was certain of was that he wanted her. _Needed_ her. He could only be put to rights if he found her.  
  
No, not if. When. She _wanted_ to be found.  
  
He fingered the soft material, brought it to his nose. Inhaled.

_And I'm not scared_  
 _Of your stolen power_  
 _I see right through you any hour_

  
"What's your name?"  
  
"Dudley. Vernon Dudley." Ugly as piss, is what he was.  
  
Scabior was almost bored. It was always the same. There was always running, always curses and hexes, always one that didn't know when to stay dead. And of course, there was always a face to be remembered with a name like Vernon Dudley.  
  
"Check it," he clipped out as he turned on his heel.  
  
There wasn't always something nice to look at, however. There wasn't always such a pretty girl. "And you, my lovely," he drawled as he stepped into her personal space, "what do they call you?"  
  
"Penelope Clearwater. Half blood."  
  
Muggleborns were worth more, but he wasn't choosey. They were all galleons in his pocket.  
  
Lips twitched as his gaze raked over her features and he shifted to step away. Only a gentle breeze stirred her hair then, and the world narrowed down to a pinpoint. Scabior leaned closer, close enough to feel the warmth of her skin on the air between them, and lifted his hand to catch her wavy strands. Her hair was soft against work-roughened fingerpads, a luxury in and of itself, but it was the scent that filled his lungs when he breathed deeply that made awareness and something else buzz beneath his skin.  
  
 ** _Penelope_**.  
  
Scabior had known she would be beautiful. He had _known_ the spicy, cloying scent would be heady so close to her pulse point. He'd known there would be soft pants whispering near his ear when he claimed the space between them.  
  
"There's no Vernon Dudley in 'ere."  
  
Scabior paused as the voice permeated the headiness of his discovery. It was in him to curse the interruptor, but he'd waited this long to find her. He could wait just a bit longer.

_I won't soothe your pain, I won't ease your strain_  
 _You'll be waiting in vain_  
 _I've got nothing for you to gain_


	25. "Worst Hangover Ever" by The Offspring (Draco Malfoy, Pansy Parkinson)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the May 2011 iPod Shuffle Fic Challenge (Rules: (1) Pick your favorite fandom. (2) Put your iPod on shuffle. (3) Write a drabble for the first ten songs. (4) You can only write for the duration of the song.)
> 
> The lyrics quoted are from "Worst Hangover Ever" by The Offspring.

_Went out drinking late last night, I had a blast._   
_But now the morning light has come and kicked my ass._   
_I've got the worst hangover ever_   
_I'm crawling to the bathroom again_   
_It hurts so bad that I'm never gonna drink again_

“You smell like the bottom of a dung heap.” Pansy nudged at the lump on the floor with the toe of her Louboutin. “You look even worse.”  
  
“Go ‘way.” The voice was muffled and gravely.  
  
She raised a brow. “Make me.”  
  
The fact of the matter was Draco wasn’t even sure he’d be able to pry his eyes open, let alone force Pansy to leave him alone. Maybe if he ignored her she’d go away. Ignoring her meant he wouldn’t have to speak, move, or do anything at all. As far as plans went, Draco thought it was a solid one.  
  
“Playing dead doesn’t even work for Kneazles,” Pansy pointed out dryly. Her nose crinkled as the stench of the room filled her lungs again. Alcohol and sweat was a most unsavory combination. Given Draco’s condition, Pansy couldn’t imagine what Blaise looked like this morning as it was _his_ bachelor party that had put the man at her feet in such a state.  
  
She pursed her lips. “Bloody pathetic.”  
  
He heard her huff at him and then her heels clicked away from him. Shoulders that had tensed, relaxed, and as Draco let himself drift back towards unconscious oblivion, he prudently refrained from telling her that playing dead obviously _did_ work.  
  
Draco must have managed to drift off, because the next thing he knew, he was covered in water and scrambling away from the light coming through the window.  
  
Pansy smirked and set the tumbler down. Water dripped from his blond locks onto his face as he peered at her from his retreat in the shadows. “Chop, chop, darling. We’ve places to go and people to mock.” When he made no move, her voice turned saccharine. “Be a love, Draco, or I’ll call your mother.”  
  
The glare her friend sent her was nearly lethal, but he dragged his feet to the washroom anyway. Pansy ignored the vulgar, disparaging mumbling he wasn’t trying very hard to hide from her and tossed him a small vial before he closed the door. “Be nice, or I’ll take that back.”  
  
He glared again and clutched the vial of hangover relief potion to his chest before slamming the door.  
  
Pansy’s lips twitched. She could never say her best friend was _boring_.


	26. Human After All (Harry Potter/Pansy Parkinson)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for 13oct at a 2011 drabble meme. She requested Harry/Pansy with the prompt 'make-up malfunction'.

Harry sneezed.  
  
"Bloody _hell_ , Potter. Was that really necessary?" Pansy frowned at him. All her good work, ruined.   
  
"Bodily functions are, in fact, necessary," Harry said, returning her frown. "What's not necessary is this."  
  
"And yet the Minister thought it _necessary_ for you to pass through me before you step foot in that room," Pansy returned, a lone brow raising as she leveled her gaze with his. "Think on that, Potter. Perhaps if you regularly groomed yourself, the leader of the wizarding world wouldn't have to call me in."  
  
Harry frowned harder. "I groom myself."  
  
Pansy only snorted softly and bent to examine the black streak on his forehead. She'd had to shave the two-day-old shadow from his face, cut his hair, and style. He'd also needed concealer beneath his eyes to cover the slightly purple tint that betrayed the man rarely slept, and she'd been attempting to fill in one of his dark brows where the hair had obviously been singed off recently. A burning spell of some kind if she wasn't mistaken.  
  
One of the many hazards of being an Auror, she supposed. That he'd had such a close call near his face, though, made her frown again. Not that she cared that Harry Potter had been in danger. It wasn't as if The Boy Who Wouldn't Die had anything to worry about.  
  
"Don't move," she told him.   
  
Harry stilled and held his breath when she leaned in again. He _wanted_ to tell her to shove it, but it was infinitely more important to not breathe. At least while she was so close. She smelled like cinnamon and spices, and it was distracting. The kind of distracting that forced his eyes to her lips, which were a rosy color, at which point he'd tick over to her pulse, where it was impossible not to note that her skin looked soft and warm, and by then there was no stopping his gaze from following the line of exposed skin down, down, the deep neckline of her gown.   
  
"There. You're presentable," Pansy said as she straightened. Harry's brows were now evenly matched and the dark smudge was gone. "Go forth and politick."  
  
Harry frowned again. Such was a oft-used expression on these nights. It wasn't that he hated the purpose of all the galas and charity events, but it was the ridiculous hoops he was expected to jump through for them. Suits and dress robes. Inane pleasantries with people he didn't know. _Hair and make-up_ this time.  
  
"This is pointless." It was not the first time he'd said it since Pansy walked into his office.   
  
"And yet you will grin and bear it," Pansy said as she put the last of her things back in her bottomless clutch.  
  
Harry just snorted.  
  
"Charming," Pansy said dryly. She owned salons and spas from London to Paris to Madrid. This little Potter thing had been a personal favor to the Minister. A decidedly single, never-to-be-repeated personal favor.  
  
Harry moved past her to the door and pulled it open. He would later blame the fact that he'd forgot to hold his breath as he passed as the reason he turned back to the Slytherin harpy and raised his arm. "Can I escort you back down?"  
  
Pansy raised a brow and her gaze flicked over him. She supposed he would do as an escort. (She ignored the fact that she appreciated how Harry bloody Potter looked in a tailored suit and robes).  
  
"You may." She set her hand in in the crook of his elbow.  
  
Harry kept his breaths shallow and his eyes away from her mouth.


	27. Gonna Break Me a Million Hearts (Draco Malfoy/Lily Luna Potter)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for hp_humpdrabbles at LiveJournal. The prompt was "Hell On Heels" by Pistol Annies.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes, cross-gen, infidelity.

_I'm hell on heels, say what you will_   
_I done made the devil a deal_   
_He made me pretty, he made me smart_   
_And I'm gonna break me a million hearts_   
_I'm hell on heels, baby I'm coming for you..._   
_{"Hell On Heels" - Pistol Annies}_

Lily Luna Potter was not a good girl.  
  
Good girls didn't sleep with their best friend's boyfriends. ( _I'm so sorry, Rosie_ ) Good girls didn't do it over and over again (in the broom shed at Grandpa and Grandma Weasley's when everyone got together for a Quidditch match, in the loo at the pub when they all went out for drinks after, against the front door of the flat he shared with her cousin, bent over the top of his desk at the Ministry where he was an interpreter in the Department of International Cooperation). Good girls didn't lie to everyone they loved ( _Gods, I'm sorry, Rosie_ ).  
  
But then, bad girls didn't expect a man like Scorpius Malfoy to leave a woman like Rose Weasley.  
  
Lily had known better, of course. Rose was lovely and talented and beautiful and smarter than anyone she knew. Scorpius was her match, and they were perfect together. They always had been.  
  
That hadn't really stopped Lily from seducing him.  
  
Perhaps she was a bad girl, after all. Because one thing was certain; good girls certainly didn't seduce their ex-lover's father in front of them.  
  
A smirk curled her lips when she met Scorpius' glare from the corner booth where he was sitting with her cousin. Rosie was oblivious (as always; Rose's one imperfection was that she believed the best of people. _So, so, so sorry, Rosie Posie._ ).  
  
It felt good when Draco's hand smoothed from her hip to the curve of her arse as he led her out of the lounge. He might be well over twenty years her senior, but if his son was anything to go by, he'd certainly be able to deliver on the promise of his touches.  
  
She'd never had a divorcée before.  
  
( _Lips parted and a lithe, freckled body arched. Long, tapered fingers dug into slender hips even as ruby painted nails dug imprints into strong shoulders, marked them with red rivets when he rolled his hips, filled her again, and again, and again. His hair was familiar to her touch; just as pale and fine as his son's. But then, his mouth made her forget who she was, and why she'd wanted him in the first place, and just about everything else except his name. "Draco, Draco, Draco," was a panted chorus on her lips as he used that very talented mouth of his at the juncture of her thighs. When he finally filled her again, hips fitting oh, so very perfectly with hers, and sucked at her pulse point, she came undone._  
  
... She was not disappointed.)  
  
Lily Luna Potter was certainly not a good girl. (And no one could ever say Draco Malfoy had been a good man. The apple hadn't fallen far from the tree.)


	28. A Very Unusual Day (Harry Potter/Pansy Parkinson)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for Humpathon 2011 at hp_humpdrabbles on LiveJournal. The prompt was 'a very unusual day... ending somewhere like this (NSFW photo)'. ([original post](http://hp-humpdrabbles.livejournal.com/72828.html?thread=417404#t417404))

The day had started like any other. Harry's alarm had gone off at five, he'd pushed snooze three times, and by the time he'd managed to get himself in the shower he was already running ten minutes late.  
  
Yes, he'd arrived at the MLE slightly damp and rumpled, but that was normal. He always started his day exactly twelve minutes after he was supposed to, and he always schlepped straight to the break room for terrible, sludgy coffee (that could possibly wake the dead; the interns in the Committee For Necromantic Research were experimenting on it). Just as usual was the irritating clip of heeled boots entering the dingy break room as another Auror, whom Harry always and ordinarily studiously ignored, came to get her own cup of shite coffee. Harry would glower (at the clock for having the gall to come back around to this horrid time of day again, at his disgusting coffee, at her), and she would sniff her disdain at him, pour her coffee, and leave. Harry would wait a beat and then follow his partner.  
  
It had all been very normal. Harry liked normal. It was comfortable and he knew what to expect. Beating his alarm clock, only ever having time to towel dry his hair, the familiar clip of his Pansy's boots, and her short, easily sparked temper. The nonsensical barbs they would toss back and forth in their shared office to start each day.  
  
Evidence suggested this day should have been like any other, full of irritation and annoyance on his part, and disdain and vexation on hers. 'Should' being the operative word. Harry couldn't really say where it'd all gone to hell, only that Pansy's breathy pants were hot against his ear as he dragged his teeth down her throat, sucked at her pulse, slid his hands up her naked back.  
  
He was _growling_ for god's sake.  
  
She'd ripped his shirt over his head and her nails had scraped over his shoulders, down his back, and he'd pulled her to him. The flush of skin to skin contact, the swell of her breasts against his chest, warm and soft and hot… Harry'd growled. And then he'd twined his fingers in her hair, none-too-gently pulled, and then claimed swollen red lips.  
  
They'd used his desk for other than its intended purpose. ( _Dainty heels dug into his back and red nails bruised crescent moons into the back of his neck as hips rolled, met again and again. Her teeth sank into his shoulder when she began to shudder. Harry buried his face in her hair, grimaced as his world also fell apart in stars and pleasure; anything to stay quiet. They hadn't cast a silencing charm, after all. Neither had expected they'd need one._ )  
  
Harry didn't like change. He liked normal. He'd worked his whole life to have some semblance of normality.  
  
Green eyes tracked down to the woman sleeping on his chest, ticked to the slight part of her lips. He could feel the warmth of her breath. (Could remember the feel of it against his mouth when he'd taken her against the inside of Grimmauld's front door, then again on the second story landing.)  
  
No, Harry didn't like change. But that didn't mean he couldn't get used to a new normal.


	29. Secrets (Harry Potter/Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for Humpathon 2011 at hp_humpdrabbles on LiveJournal. The prompt was 'triofic - what's their secret?'. ([original post](http://hp-humpdrabbles.livejournal.com/72828.html?thread=418940#t418940))
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes.

Ron's secret is that he _likes_ sharing her with Harry. He likes the way Hermione looks cradled against his mate's body when he tastes her, nose buried in her curls, tongue sliding through her folds, and blue eyes rolled up to watch her head drop back against Harry's shoulder, to watch hands that have blunt nails like his smooth up her abdomen and cup her breasts. When his eyes meet Harry's as she falls apart for them, Ron likes the _we did good_ shared in the glance.  
  
It's a secret because Ron is supposed to be the jealous one. He's the one who's supposed to be the least comfortable with what happened so many nights ago in another part of the middle of nowhere when they thought they were going to die and fail everyone.  
  
Everyone's got their part to play.  
  
\---  
  
Harry's secret is that he doesn't want to ever fill Ron up. Not like he does with Hermione. He likes to sink into her, likes the way her curves accept his harder planes, that their bodies were literally made to fit together. It seems a blasphemy to that perfection to try the same thing with Ron, an act he knows they'd have to prepare their bodies for. He knows the kinds of things they'd need for such a task; Fred was never shy about sharing his exploits and he'd not teased Harry (much) when questions were asked how it was done with Lee Jordan (so long ago now, and in ignorance that he'd need the answers).  
  
It's a secret because Harry knows Ron will want it someday, even if he doesn't know it yet himself. For Harry to take Ron like that is for Harry to be on top, literally and figuratively, and Ron's always needed that, most especially when no one's looking.  
  
He hopes that someday he'll feel differently.  
  
\---  
  
Hermione's secret is that she's scared. Everything is so perfect and feels so right. When one's buried in her body, the other in her mouth, everyone moving in an innate, syncopated tandem it's nearly impossible to find with a single person, let alone two, she knows they were meant to find this with each other. But Voldemort is not dead and now they're more invested than ever, more connected than ever. She's supposed to be the detached one, the one who can use reason and logic to get them all through when it seems hopeless. She can't _afford_ to care more, to love like this. It increases the likelihood that she'll be affected by her emotions when reason is needed. Their lives have depended on her calm rationale in crisis. And their lives are still on the line; they've still so many Horcruxes to find and destroy.  
  
It's a secret because Hermione must be strong for them. Ron will be brave and foolish, Harry will be brave and foolish, and it is up to her to be calm, collected, and ready. She cannot let them know about the fear because there is no room for more than the worry they already share at the seemingly insurmountable task before them. They need her to be who she's always been, not the lovesick woman they've made her into.  
  
She'd never thought she'd love like this.

 


	30. Bewitched & Bothered (Draco Malfoy/Astoria Greengrass)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for hp_humpdrabbles on LiveJournal.
> 
> Warnings: sexual themes.

Astoria didn't like him. She didn't like the way her glares made him smirk, or that his eyes lit with amusement when she gave him a piece of her mind. He was too tall, too pale, too _insufferable_. Astoria certainly didn't like that he was handsome and that he seemed to know it. One of _those_ men.  
  
Ugh.  
  
What she especially hated, though, was how she couldn't help but be aware of him. She loathed that she could feel when he came into a room before her eyes ever landed on him, and that the smirk which irritated her so very much also made her pulse pound in an disconcerting way. Most of all, Astoria hated when he caught her gaze, because heat would blossom low in her belly at the intensity with which he looked at her. That his grey eyes imparted amusement when he noted her reactions only served to further inflame her ire.  
  
No, Astoria did not like Draco Malfoy. When her sister's damnable wedding was through and she was no longer bound by propriety and civility as Daphne's maid of honor, and Draco was no longer a seeming daily annoyance as Blaise's best man, then she would be through with him for good. There would only be the occasional gala or ball, and Astoria could easily avoid the intolerable man.  
  
She didn't take into account Draco's most irritating quality of all, however.  
  
He will not be ignored.  
  
Perhaps that's why she found herself tugging impatiently at his belt after he'd already ruined her gloss with his kisses and her hair with his hands. It may have been why she'd wrapped her legs around his hips when he lifted her, and why she sighed into his mouth when he finally filled her. It could have even been why her nails raked down his neck when everything felt so good that she forgot not to leave marks -- they had to get back to the reception, after all.  
  
It was definitely why she slapped him after, when he lifted the strap of her dress back on her shoulder and smirked, as if it was all very amusing.  
  
It _wasn't_. It was horrifying. Astoria didn't know what she was going to do. He'd gone and made her _like_ him, and that was the most maddening of all.


	31. It Was Good in the Beginning (Draco Malfoy/Ginny Weasley)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating:** PG-13  
>  **Warnings:** Sexual themes, swearing, roughness.  
>  **Notes:** Written (very belatedly) for SometimesSelkie at a 2011 drabble meme. She requested a vignette based on my long fic, _Dark Heart Sillhouette_ , featuring Draco/Ginny and using the prompt 'it was good in the beginning'.

It was good in the beginning.

It's the lie Draco tells himself to justify everything that's happened. Because if it wasn't good, wasn't worth something, if he hadn't felt something real, then the anger would stick. The fiery resentment would burn brighter. 

She used him, after all. In the end she made a fool of him twice over in front of everyone who mattered -- in front of everyone who desired his place next to the Dark Lord; they scent blood in the water like sharks, and will not hesitate to strike where they see weakness.

…

_His face stung where her palm had struck him and he reacted before he could think on the wisdom of his actions._

_Slim wrists were pinned to the wall on either side of her face. He bent until he could feel her angry pants warm against his face, held her glare with his own. "You will not win this."_

_"Fuck you, Malfoy," she hissed, whiskey brown eyes flashing with her anger -- passion. And then she leaned forward, bit at his lips, dared him to fight back._

_He took her that first time against the wall. She screamed his name._

… 

He'd known she was a risk. How could a Weasley be anything but a risk in this new world?

But it was good in the beginning. ( _Lies._ )


	32. Bad Sometimes (Pansy Parkinson/Scorpius Malfoy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating:** R  
>  **Warnings:** Sexual themes, cross generation pairing.  
>  **Notes:** Written for [Humpathon 2013](http://hp-humpdrabbles.livejournal.com/143061.html?thread=964309#t964309) on LiveJournal. The prompt was " _Pansy/Scorpius - D/s. The D/s can be ultra-codified or, on the contrary, just a bit of a power struggle._ " Hoped to convey they're close and that Scorpius has known her his whole life, without saying so explicitly.

"Are we done yet?" It was his line. 

"You're an insufferable prat." And that was hers.

Scorpius could hear the fondness in her voice. When he was a bit younger, the warmth in her tone, only for him, made him warm with pleasure. Now that pleasure was charged, was heady in a way he supposed it should be when he was alone with Rose Weasley.

(But then, that was how he figured out he wasn't ever going to feel anything but friendship for Rose. When he thought of her, was with her, kissed her, even, it didn't feel like _this_.) 

He spun the woman in his arms, maneuvering easily around the other waltzing couples -- a skill his mum had forced him to develop not long after he could walk and talk.

"You love me," he prodded, watching her watch everyone else around them. He was taller than her now and he could see what the neckline of her dress had to offer in ways he hadn't been able to before. 

"Mmm," she hummed, dark eyes shifting up to his. Her lips twitched slightly at the corners. "Perhaps."

"You want me." It was a gamble. A gamble he'd been contemplating since he turned seventeen. Scorpius let his hand drift _just_ a bit lower than was socially acceptable. 

Pansy raised a brow at him.

He smirked. 

… and then her eyes darkened with intent and she smirked back.

…

_She pushed him, the back of his knees hit the edge of the settee, and then he was looking up at her. The tiny smirk curling her lips made his pulse race. He knew that smirk, had known it his whole life. It meant she was up to no good, and right now she was up to no good with him._

_"You'll do what you're told." She set the tip of a stiletto clad foot on the cushion between his legs and pulled the hem of her evening gown up, up, up. The pointed toe of her shoe brushed him in ways that made him want to shift forward. He didn't dare though, not with the way she was pinning him with her eyes. "And if you're a very good boy, you'll be rewarded."_

_"I can be good," he murmured absently, eyes falling from hers to watch her expose the lacy top of her stockings and then the smooth, bare skin of her thigh. It was an errant, giddy kind of thought in the back of his mind that the type of rewards she was talking about were not the kinds of rewards she had gifted him when he was young, the sweets and games._

_Pansy shifted her foot forward slightly, rubbed against the bulge in his pants -- fucking amazing, more, please, more \-- and Scorpius jerked, his eyes flying back up to hers. _

_She smirked. "We shall see. Now, be a love and remove my stocking, hmm?"_

_Scorpius swallowed hard. "Yes, miss."_


	33. Hello Lover (Charlie Weasley/Narcissa Malfoy)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating:** R  
>  **Warnings:** Sexual themes, infidelity.  
>  **Notes:** Written for [Humpathon 2013](http://hp-humpdrabbles.livejournal.com/143061.html?thread=978133#t978133) on LiveJournal. The prompt was "Charlie/Narcissa - Accidents Will Happen." First time I've written this couple. Hope you enjoy!

**oops.**

Narcissa knew better.

Bellatrix was indecorous, unladylike, and slightly mad. Her tendencies had taken her to glorious heights, but a wildfire can only burn so long as there is tinder to consume. Bella never did learn the prudence of balance. She burned, burned, burned until she was snuffed out. 

Reckless. Foolish.

Andromeda was always willful and stubborn. She would say she wanted nothing of the Blacks and their dramatics, but she'd always been determined to be a martyr. Meda liked to think she had taken the higher, more moral road. It made her blind to reality, unprepared. She was left with nothing but a half-breed grandson. 

Narcissa. She had been the pride of the family, in the end. Ladylike. Demure. _Cunning._ She'd married well and had found ways to keep her family alive, and in good standing. Narcissa was not known for being shortsighted or foolish. 

She was smart enough to know entertaining an attraction to a Weasley was imprudent at best, madness at worst. And she was old enough to know better.

Narcissa liked to think she'd earned the right to not give a damn.

**i did it.**

It was his hands. They were the hands of a man who _worked_ with his hands. Strong. Calloused. Scarred. Surprisingly well groomed nails. Kept short, not bitten, as she might have supposed. 

His hands were freckled. She wanted them on her body. 

The first time the thought had come to mind, she'd been taken aback. It had been a very long time since Narcissa had felt desire. She was fond of her husband, and he of her, but Lucius was no more interested in her body than she was in his. They had married and procreated as was their duty to their families. They had both always felt themselves fortunate they at least liked one another.

Charlie Weasley though… He filled dress robes in a way that men of leisure never would be able to. And his hands… oh, his hands. 

**again.**

"Mrs. Malfoy," he murmured against her neck. She watched his hands smooth up her rib cage, cover her breasts. Tanned, freckled fingers on display against her pale, pale skin. He squeezed. She sighed and dropped her head back against his shoulder.

"You've been so obliging. A generous donor." His hips jerked forward and she pressed back, her own dainty hands splayed against the wall. "An obliging…" His hips rolled once more and he filled her again; the dull roar of voices on the other side of the door muted the sounds the slipped from her lips. "… _host_ ," he hissed.

She guided one of his hands down her flat stomach, between her legs. She was _so close._ "I assure you," she breathed, "that the pleasure is all mine."

Charlie huffed a laugh, his breath stirring the fine, damp strands of hair that had escaped her chignon. And then he jerked his hips one more time. Flicked his fingers. And she saw stars.

Yes. Yes, Narcissa liked his hands.


	34. A Beautiful Lie (Rodolphus Lestrange/Bellatrix Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating:** R  
>  **Warnings:** Sexual themes.  
>  **Notes:** Written for Humpathon 2013 on LiveJournal. The prompt was " _Bellatrix/Rodolphus - That's not what you said last night. The morning after she first told him she loved him when she refuses to admit it happened._ " It's hard for me to resist Rodolphus and Bellatrix. I love exploring their dynamic when they're young, and how they came together. Thanks, dallirious, for the great prompt -- is not something I would have tried with them on my own :) Hope you enjoy!

They were safe enough from prying eyes in the Room of Requirement, but they would have to go soon. Missing breakfast was acceptable, and would not be overly questioned, but it would not do to be late to class.

He had a perfect attendance record, and he intended to keep it that way. Plus, he did not want to give their yearmates anything to whisper about. Bella would enjoy ruffling feathers and setting tongues to wagging, but even if she was not concerned with propriety, Rodolphus did care, if only to ensure the match he had spent the last several years meticulously mechanizing for himself would come to fruition after graduation. His father would never look kindly on a match with an improper woman, regardless of her last name. And Bellatrix Black was already so very _herself_. His father thought her youngest sister the better match.

But he wanted Bella. Had always wanted Bella. She was so … _alive_. Lived so brazenly, so fully. So passionately.

Just that moment, though, her features were soft. Sleep took away the cunning curve of her lips, the perniciousness that shadowed the depths of her pale eyes. Instead, her lips were relaxed and slightly parted, and even as he watched, she nuzzled his chest. 

One corner of his mouth quirked up, and much to his surprise, warmth blossomed in his chest.

Rodolphus reached out to trace a finger down the bridge of her nose. It crinkled beneath his touch and dark lashes fluttered. Then pale eyes were glaring at him.

He sighed. "I suppose it was too much to hope you might be sweet of disposition first thing."

"When am I _ever_ sweet of disposition." Bella dug her nails into his skin hard enough to leave half moon imprints.

Rodolphus smirked. "Last night you did tell me you lov-" He hissed before he could finish.

It was Bella's turn to smirk and she tightened her grip on him beneath the blanket. "What was that?"

His eyes narrowed. And then his fingers were tangled in her mussed hair and he was pulling her up from her recline on his chest. He was not gentle. The soft sound that slipped from her lips pleased him greatly.

"That I find you quite sweet at times." She had relinquished her grip when he manhandled her up his body. Her acquiescence was hard earned. Bellatrix Black did not give way to any other. 

He hooked his free hand behind her knee, tugged, and with a slight shift he was inside her. She sighed her pleasure and her gaze darkened, lids heavy now. Rodolphus loosened his grip on her hair and slid his hand to grip the nape of her neck. "Bloody me, if it pleases you," he murmured in the scant space between them. "But quickly, love, else we'll be late."

Their hips met again, and then again. Her nails ripped down his back ( _bloody, vicious, love, love, loved that about her_ ), and he hissed. 

"I hate you," she breathed. But he heard _I love you._


	35. Devil Within (Tom Riddle/Bellatrix Black)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating:** R  
>  **Warnings:** Sexual themes.  
>  **Notes:** Written for Humpathon 2013 at LiveJournal. The prompt was " _Any - attracted to power. He's forty-five, handsome and powerful, she's twenty and wants him. mutual or unrequited, any rating._ " So. I've never written them before and I'm not sure where this came from, but the pairing is what the prompt brought to mind. The bolded bits are lyrics from the song "[The Devil Within](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-bq5VyHWEo)" by Digital Daggers.

**i will keep quiet, you won’t even know I’m here**

She is intoxicating. 

Everything about her calls to him. She is beautiful, dangerous, _powerful_. Her blood is so very pure. 

Tom Riddle must have Bellatrix Black. Every king needs a court, and every court needs an executioner. 

**you won’t suspect a thing, you won’t see me in the mirror**

She regularly attends the functions hosted by those of good breeding and even more money. Tom has many courtiers and he is never without an invitation.

He watches. Waits.

Young Bellatrix Black is too loud, too bold, too ostentatious. She does not give a damn for propriety and Tom has seen her mother scowl often at these events in the direction of her eldest daughter. 

She is _magnificent._

Her dusky blue eyes are shadowed with things that these people cannot understand. She thirsts for blood. For the kill. There is a thread of violence that permeates her so thoroughly that her very presence puts those around her on edge. And yet she is so very captivating, glowing with health and vitality and unbridled passion, that they are drawn to her even so.

He _must_ have her.

**but I crept into your heart, you can’t make me disappear, till I make you**

The first time they meet formally she dares him to best her. The intelligence and challenge in her eyes tells him that she has heard of him and what he is about. The great things he will do for their world. Knows enough to be curious. But she is wild, unbroken. She will not let anyone unworthy tame her.

His smirk is every bit as bladed as her own. He tells her she will be his. 

She laughs. Too loud, too brazen, and the sound turns heads. The women's expressions are pinched and disdainful. The men's eyes linger too long. 

**you’ll never know what hit you, won’t see me closing in**

He takes her over her father's desk. 

It is Christmas Eve and the festivities and merry making are a dull roar beyond the door, down the hallway, in the ballroom of the Black's country estate.

In the place where her father refused to take his mark on the tender flesh of his inner wrist, Tom Riddle has the man's eldest daughter bent forward over the heirloom writing table that is the centerpiece of the room. The layers of her dress are bunched around her waist and his fingers are tangled in long, raven locks. He fills her. Deeply, roughly, punishingly. She screams for him. 

When it is over and he is straightening his waistcoat, she observes him from the high-back chair near the fireplace. She is languid and relaxed in her repose, uncaring that her hair is wild and her dress askew. (She is stunning.) 

The light in her heavy-lidded eyes has changed. "You are truly all that you say you are." 

Tom smirks as he tightens his tie back into place. "And more."

**i’m underneath your skin, the devil within, you’ll never know what hit you**

There are marks on him. Angry, stinging red lines down his neck. Her nails. Blood seeping at the corner of his mouth. Her teeth. She is the only one who has managed it. Bellatrix Black will never be broken, nor tamed, but she will love him for being worthy.

Tom is pleased. Everything is as he planned.


	36. how you like me now? (Cormac McLaggen/Lily Luna Potter)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating:** PG-13  
>  **Warnings:** None.  
>  **Summary:** Ginny does not approve. Lily Luna doesn't give a damn.  
>  **Notes:** Leigh, I was SO not surprised 'masquerade' was one of your desired prompt/themes XD Have written for you a bajillion times, but tried something a little different here. Hope it hits the spot! Happy Halloween!
> 
> Written for leigh_adams at the [hp_halloween event](http://hp-halloween.livejournal.com/111334.html) on LiveJournal.

It was a masquerade. Hidden identities, tantalizing. 

Their blazing hair gave them away.

" _Lily Luna Potter_." A hiss. The grip on her wrist was tight. "What are you _doing_?"

"Whatever I want." Lily smirked. Her gaze briefly landed on a blond man nearby. "It's what you taught me, after all."

Ginny relinquished her grip, lips parting. A gasp. She rallied quickly. "I'm still you're mother, and-"

"And your opinion hasn't mattered since you chose _him_." Lily tipped her chin toward Draco Malfoy, divorcée. Her mother's longtime lover. "I don't give a damn what you think about my dress. I'm twenty. Skirting the line of what's proper is expected. You, on the other hand…" She made a point to eye the too-low neckline. "You're trying too hard, mother."

Ginny tinted an unbecoming red. She was angry. _Good._

"And if you don't like my date, do try to have some manners." Lily sniffed. "Keep it to yourself."

This time Lily was the one who got to do the walking away. 

Cormac gathered her flush against his body. "Give her hell?" he murmured against her neck.

"Of course."

"That's my girl," he said before capturing her lips. Lily smiled against his mouth.


	37. Like a Boy (Charlie Weasley/Gwenog Jones)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating:** PG-13  
>  **Warnings:** Swearing.  
>  **Notes:** Written for tamlane at my [2013 Drabble Meme of DoOm](http://elle-blessing.livejournal.com/389544.html). She requested Charlie/Any Older Woman with the prompt of 'Quidditch final', and that she'd quite like it if I could 'work in some unexpected UST'. This characterization of Gwenog Jones is based on my [RPG version](https://sites.google.com/site/elletator/home/harry_potter/caliga_ortus/gwenog_jones/biography) of her.
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

Charlie couldn't really remember how many photos he'd posed for, didn't know all the people who'd slapped him on the back, and couldn't remember all the faces of the girls who'd snuck through the mob of people to steal a kiss.

Apparently everyone wanted a piece of the team captain when he happened to be the Seeker who caught the snitch to win the Hogwarts Quidditch Cup. Literally. Now that he'd finally been able to extricate himself and head toward the locker room, a quick check of his person revealed that his goggles were missing off his helmet, and one of his gloves had been pulled from his belt.

"Bloody hell," he sighed as he tossed the remaining glove into his helmet and ran a hand through his hair. He couldn't really afford replacements.

A glove landed on the ground in front of him and he stopped. Blue eyes found a slight figure leaning against the wall in the shadows near the locker room door. He couldn't make out any identifying features in the dim twilight.

"I relieved the thief of her bounty." The voice was familiar... and then when the figure stepped into the light, so was the face. Gwenog Jones had won the Quidditch Cup for Slytherin every year she was captain.

"Thanks." If he sounded slightly confused, it was because he was. She'd graduated just after he started playing for Gryffindor, and he remembered her being something of an ice queen. Snobby. Elitist. ( _Hot._ )

He bent down to retrieve his glove and when he stood back up she was much closer. Last time Charlie had been in the same breathing space as Gwenog Jones she'd been taller than him. Now he was looking down at her. ( _And down her shirt. Oops._ )

He forced his eyes up to hers only to find her smirking. If the heat crawling up his neck and ears was any indication, he was probably turning red. Damn. "So."

She raised a brow. "So."

"Congratulations. On making captain for the Harpies." Thank Merlin he kept up with the league. Bloody hell, though. What was she doing here? Why was she talking to him? Why was he finding it so difficult to keep his eyes on her face?

"Thank you," she said with a small dip of her head. "Congratulations, yourself." A smile played at the corners of her mouth. "You played quite well. Much better than I remember."

"I'd hope I'm better now than I was when I was twelve," he said with a grin, easy friendliness coming to him with her own unexpected amiability. "I'm surprised you remember me at all."

"I never forget an opponent even if they are no taller than a dwarf and hopelessly outclassed." Her eyes were bright and her voice was warm with humor.

Charlie laughed. It was true enough. He'd been scrawny before he hit his growth spurt the summer before sixth year.

When he met her eyes again Charlie realized they were standing even closer together, and that he could now smell the warm spice of whatever perfume she was wearing.

"I'm quite a bit taller than a dwarf now," he pointed out. Humor still tinted his features, but his focus was quickly narrowing down to the witch in front of him. The scent of her. The heat he could feel radiating from her.

"Quite," she murmured. Her dark eyes darkened in a way Charlie had only seen from the girls he'd snogged in the alcove on the third floor by the abandoned classroom.

But Gwenog Jones wasn't a girl. She was a woman. She was the recently crowned captain of one of the hottest teams in professional Quidditch right now. And she was flirting with him. Maybe. Possibly.

( _He could still see down her shirt. And it didn't seem to matter she was a woman with a career, and he still had a few months left until he graduated from Hogwarts, because he was pretty sure her waist was just the right size for his hands and that her mouth would fit just right with his..._ )

Charlie had no idea what in the bloody hell he was thinking. Doing. _Fuck._

If she'd just been a girl he went to school with, he'd have made a move. But she wasn't. And the fact that she wasn't, that there was knowledge in her dark eyes that wasn't there in the girls he'd snogged before -- _that's_ what made him want to trap her against the wall a few steps behind her and find out what she knew that he didn't yet.

The moment stretched with his indecision.

And then it snapped when the darkness in her eyes shifted to something brighter. Amusement. "Taller, but maybe not all grown just yet."

 _Ouch._ He could feel heat on the tips of his ears again.

"Good game, Charlie Weasley. The girl I came to scout was disappointing, but you made the trip worthwhile." She laid a hand on his chest and tip-toed up to brush a kiss to his cheek.

She apparated away moments later.

Charlie could still feel the soft brush of her lips against his skin, the heat of her, the spicy warm smell of her perfume. It was only when one of his mates yelled at him from across the pitch to hurry up that he stirred into motion and made his way into the empty locker room. And it was only when he was sitting down on the bench by his locker that he looked at the card she had pressed into his hand when she'd invaded his space and short-circuited his brain.

Her name and floo coordinates were printed in neat letters on the personal business card.

_Holy shite._


	38. the bridge is crossed, so stand there and watch it burn (Zacharias Smith/Astoria Greengrass)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **Rating:** R  
>  **Warnings:** Sexual content  
>  **Notes:** Written for leigh_adams at hp_humpdrabbles' [2014 Humpathon](http://hp-humpdrabbles.livejournal.com/170203.html?thread=1218523#t1218523) on LiveJournal. 
> 
> She requested Zacharias/Astoria, with the prompt " _The bridge is crossed, so stand there and watch it burn, we've passed the point of no return,_ ” which are lyrics from [Point of No Return](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-ZAgfR_Ck0) in Phantom of the Opera.
> 
> I used [Fools In Love](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvKgqWq_VfM) by Inara George for inspiration as well.

_"Yesss." It was a breathless hiss of air. A warm, wet exhalation he could feel on his nec, and then the rhythmic shift of their bodies had her breath and lips and the warmth and slickness of her body brushing against his again and again._

_Zach reveled in it. In her. He liked women, and women liked him, and there were plenty willing to share a bed, a closet, or whatever wall was convenient._

_Astoria was different though. She was contradictions. Aristocratic and high class, but kind. Soft in ways he expected (skin that had never seen a hard day's work), and in ways he would never have guessed (believed in people, hoped for the best, gave her heart away too easily)._

_Fingers dug into his back, nails raking almost painfully (so good), and he shuddered. So close now..._

_He would hold off his pleasure until he saw her fall. No one surrendered to pleasure, to him, the way she did. (No one let him mark their body like she did; his hands on her hips, suction bruises where neck met shoulder, marks that didn’t fade quickly. ((Zach didn’t even try to mark anyone else like he marked her.))_

_His fingers twined in silky strands, a shift, a gasp, and then brown eyes met his…hazy, dark, pleasure-addled eyes._

_Their gazes held as hips met once, twice, and then she was arching beneath him, crying out. She was small and soft and delicate (mine, mine, mine), but the heat of her gripped him, her body drew him in, and those dark, dark eyes made it impossible to see anything but her as he lost himself in her._

_It was in the quiet moments much later when everything was still, eyes closed and breathing rhythmic as he neared sleepy oblivion, that he heard it. It was just a sleepy puff of air against his bare chest, barely words at all._

_His eyes opened. It was something he wasn't supposed to hear, something that wasn't supposed to ever be said._

_This was sex. Not love._

...

Zach hadn't thought it would hurt to see her tears. 

"Why?" It’s said as softly as the exhalation of his name when she’s close to falling apart in his arms. It’s soft like her skin, and her kindness.

"You broke the rules.” He glances away, momentary relief, and then forces his eyes back. “You knew what this was, and what it wasn't." 

The words taste like sand. But Zach doesn’t do commitment, doesn’t do love. There’s always been lots of women, and they all know how this goes. ( _It's only been Astoria for awhile now, but that’s just how it is sometimes. She’s not different. She’s not._ )

He watches confusion shift to realization, shift to anger. 

“You're a fool." It’s a hiss, meant to sting if the heat in her eyes is anything to go by. The anger doesn’t last long though, because moments later her features shutter and her body folds in on itself as her arms wrap around her middle. 

She looks up at him then. “You’re right. I knew what this was, and what it wasn’t.” Her lips curl slightly, and it’s a sad thing. His chest hurts at seeing it, and the feeling is unfamiliar. Zach doesn’t know what to make of it. 

“It turns out I’m as much a fool as you are.” She shakes her head and laughs. “Fools in love.” It’s spoken more to herself than anything. “Are there any other kinds of lovers?”

She glances at him again, and between one breath and the next she’s there, soft hands cupping his face and a warm body flush against his. Her lips are soft… He angles his head, catches her lips, deepens the kiss. Does it without thinking, does it like he’s done it a million times before ( _he has_ ). She’s sweet ( _always so sweet_ )… 

And then she’s gone, and it takes him a moment to pull himself from the warm haze, only to realize she’s now several steps away. ( _That’s not how it was supposed to be. She fit against his chest, has his marks on her body, calls for him in her sleep…_ )

“Goodbye.” It’s just a whisper, and then she’s gone. 

Zach’s supposed to feel free. It’s how it’s always been in the past when it’s come time to break it off with a bird who got too attached. 

Zach doesn’t feel free at all.


End file.
